Toshiba announced on Wednesday that they would ship the first ever 512GB 2.5-inch solid state flash drive in first half of 2009. Toshiba was able to achieve higher storage by using their new 43nm manufacturing process based MLC NAND flash chips. The 43nm process brings higher capacity along with faster read / write speeds. The new SSDs will be able to read data at peak speed of 240MBps and write date at peak speed of 200MBps. Making them one of the fastest solid state drives. Toshiba says that longevity of the new drive has also improved and the mean time between failures now stands at one million hours.
The 2.5-inch SSDs will be available in three capacities of 128GB, 256GB and 512GB. Toshiba will also release a 1.8-inch version using the same NAND flash chips and it will be available in 64GB, 128GB and 256GB capacities. Like the 2.5-inch SSDs, the 1.8-inch version will also ship in first half of 2009.