Korean giant Samsung made a bid to gain the pole position in the solid state drive (SSD) market by announcing a 2.5-inch 256GB multi-level cell device.

The drive, which has a S-ATA II interface, performs approximately 2.4 times faster than ordinary hard drives, Samsung claimed.

It's also 9.5 millimetres thin, and Samsung claims to have developed reliability for the drive of one million hours mean time between failure, with power consumption 0.9 watts when it's in active mode.

Mass production of the drive is set for the year end, and it will sample the drives in September, as well as readying a 1.8-inch version in the fourth quarter of this year. X