Super Talent Technology on Wednesday introduced a 256 GB solid-state drive that the company claims is thinner than any other similar capacity SSD for notebooks and other mobile devices.

The 2.5-inch drive, with the model number FSD56GC25H, is 12.5 millimeters thick, or slightly less than a half-inch. Super Talent claims the drive is 40% thinner than other similar drives.

The drive uses an industry standard SATA-I interface, making it interchangeable with conventional 2.5-inch SATA hard drives. The new product has an access time of 0.1 milliseconds, and maximum read and write speeds of 65 MB per second and 50 MB per second, respectively. Super Talent claims the drive can withstand shocks five times greater than traditional hard-disk drives.

"We designed this drive for applications that need rugged and reliable storage in a very compact form factor," Joe James, marketing director for Super Talent, said in a statement.

The drive is designed, manufactured and tested in Super Talent's San Jose, Calif., headquarters. Samples are available, and pricing is given on request.

Solid-state drives are faster and more rugged than hard-disk drives, but are also far more expensive. As a result, the drives are mostly used in notebooks used by the military, or by people who work outside. Manufacturers, however, have also started integrating SSDs with HDDs. So-called "hybrid drives" can store the operating system in the SSD, for example, for a faster startup time.

Intel and Micron Technology last month said they have developed technology for a high-speed SSD that's five times faster than current products used in consumer and professional devices ranging from handheld computers and notebooks to digital cameras and camcorders.

The NAND flash memory chips developed jointly by the two companies can reach speeds of up to 200 MB per second for reading data and 100 MB per second for writing data, the partners said.