Intel Ships 160GB X25-M Solid State Disk

by Marco Chiappetta — Tuesday, December 23, 2008, 10:03 AM EDT

In our initial look at Intel's X25-M 80GB solid state drive, we mentioned that the company had plans to introduce 160GB variants a some point in early 2009. According to Intel's PR Chip Shots website, however, 2.5" 160GB SSDs have just begun shipping and a 1.8" model will follow shortly...

"Intel is expanding its award-winning Intel X25-M and X18-M SATA Solid-State Drive (SSD) family by announcing the production release of a 160 gigabyte (GB) capacity drive in a 2.5-inch form factor. The product is shipping now, and a 1.8-inch 160GB version will begin shipping next month."
Information listed on the Intel site would lead us to believe the new 160GB SSD and original 80GB model share the same specifications, and differ only in capacity. According to the site, both drives feature Intel Multi-Level Cell (MLC) NAND Flash Memory in a 10 Channel Parallel Architecture and both offer read speeds up to 250MB/s and write speeds up to 70MB/s with read latency of 85 microseconds.

There is no official word on pricing and the drives haven't hit the major price search engines, but considering the 80GB X25-M sells for about $500, we expect the 160GB model to sell for well north of that figure.

Tags: Intel, SSD, Storage, Solid State Drive, SATA

Marco Chiappetta

Marco's interest in computing and technology dates all the way back to his early childhood. Even before being exposed to the Commodore P.E.T. and later the Commodore 64 in the early ‘80s, he was interested in electricity and electronics, and he still has the modded AFX cars and shop-worn soldering irons to prove it. Once he got his hands on his own Commodore 64, however, computing became Marco's passion. Throughout his academic and professional lives, Marco has worked with virtually every major platform from the TRS-80 and Amiga, to today's high end, multi-core servers. Over the years, he has worked in many fields related to technology and computing, including system design, assembly and sales, professional quality assurance testing, and technical writing. In addition to being the Managing Editor here at HotHardware for close to 15 years, Marco is also a freelance writer whose work has been published in a number of PC and technology related print publications and he is a regular fixture on HotHardware’s own Two and a Half Geeks webcast. - Contact: marco(at)hothardware(dot)com