Thinnest SSD? Sort of

A solid-state drive maker is claiming its new 256GB drive is the world's thinnest.

While that may be true, it won't fit into the world's thinnest notebooks, which makes the claim less impressive. The SSD from Super Talent measures 12.5 millimeters thick. Sure that sounds teeny tiny, but that's more like pregnant-Nicole-Richie-thin compared to the 9.5-millimeter drives on the market, which are more like Nicole-Richie-after-Thanksgiving-dinner-thin: seems like a negligible difference in size, but has major implications. If you haven't noticed, some PC makers are battling over who can create the skinniest notebook. So while packing 256GB into that size is impressive, thinner drives with less storage space are what the market is currently demanding.

(Credit: Super Talent)

In any case, the Super Talent SSD is a 2.5-inch drive that reads data at 65MB per second, writes at 50MB per second, and can withstand up to 16G of vibration. No price yet, but they sell to OEMs anyway.

Almost every hard drive maker is jumping on the solid-state bandwagon since solid state is expected to increase from its current 1 percent share in the memory market to almost 30 percent over the next three years. So expect the competition among them over who's the thinnest, fastest, lightest, and prettiest to continue ratcheting up.