Mushkin Unveils World’s First 480GB mSATA SSD
Mushkin announced on Wednesday the upcoming launch of the “world’s first” mSATA SSD with a 480 GB capacity on a single module. It’s the latest addition to the company’s Atlas family of mSATA drives, and is scheduled to be available early January 2013 in the U.S. at select resellers and distributors.
If you want an ultra-thin laptop like an Ultrabook, manufacturers are pretty limited on the components they can fit inside that slender case. Storage is no exception, with most relying on an mSATA SSD as the more typical 2.5-inch drives just won’t fit. That also means storage space has been quite limited to just a couple hundred of gigabytes. Until now, that is.
Although read/write speeds for the mSATA 480GB version haven’t been officially announced, the 256GB model achieves 560MB/s reads and 530MB/s writes over a 6Gb/s SATA III connection using a SandForce controller. The 480GB model will at the very least equal those speeds, if not improve on them slightly.
The Atlas ships with TRIM and S.M.A.R.T. support, comes with a 3-year limited warranty, and is expected to start shipping by the middle of January next year. It’s by no means cheap, though. On its own you can expect to pay $499.99, in the U.S that is, although that price is sure to drop significantly for any manufacturers wanting to ship one inside an Ultrabook. Still, at around a Rs 55 per gigabyte for such a speedy drive, it’s still a very tempting proposition.
Specifications:
– SandForce SF-2281 SSD processor with unthrottled IOPS
– SATA III (6Gb/s) interface
– Supports ATA APM, Security Set, NCQ
– TRIM support (OS/driver support required)
– S.M.A.R.T. support
– Built-in BCH ECC (Up to 55 bits correctable per 512 byte sector)
– High speed MLC NAND
– MO-300 (mSATA) form factor (50.80 x 29.85 x 4.85mm)
– Mini PCIe Interface
– User-upgradeable firmware
– RoHS, FCC, CE
– 3-year limited warranty
