Toshiba 512GB Notebook SSD (click for larger image)

Toshiba on Thursday introduced what it says is the first 2.5-inch, 512-GB solid-state drive for notebooks.

The vendor plans to showcase the storage device at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in January. The new drive is one of a series of SSDs built with Toshiba's latest 43-nanometer manufacturing process.

The drives also will come in capacities of 64 GB, 128 GB, and 256 GB, which will be available in 1.8-inch and 2.5-inch enclosures. Samples of the new products will be available in the first quarter of next year, with mass production scheduled for the second quarter. Toshiba did not disclose pricing.

Toshiba's second-generation SSDs include a multilevel cell controller that achieves read/write speeds of 240 MBps and 200 MBps, respectively. The drives also offer data encryption that complies with the Advanced Encryption Standard.

Other specs include a serial ATA-2 interface and a mean time between failures of 1 million hours. Depending on the model, the drives weigh from a half-ounce to about 2 ounces.

SSDs are typically lighter, are more durable, consume less power, and deliver higher performance than traditional hard-disk drives. The technology, however, costs much more per gigabyte than HDDs. As a result, SSDs are used in select applications, such as mini-laptops where less weight and more durability in a storage device are important.

Within the data center, SSDs have been targeted for applications that require faster transaction times.