Toshiba will next year become the latest hard disk maker to embrace Flash technology as an alternative to magnetic media when it puts solid-state drives of up to 128GB in capacity into mass production.

Toshiba's roadmap has 32GB, 64GB and 128GB SATA-connected 71 x 54 x 3mm "modules" sampling in February 2008 before going into mass production the following month. In April, it will begin sampling laptop-friendly 1.8in and 2.5in 3Gb/s SATA drives in those three capacities. Mass production will commence in May.

Toshiba's 128GB SSD: due next Spring

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The 1.8in drives and module form-factor units operate at 3.3V, the 2.5in drives at 5V. All of them are rated at a maximum sequential write speed of 40MB/s and a maximum sequential read speed of 100MB/s, Toshiba said.

The drives' operating life - as measured by the mean time to failure (MTTF) - is one million hours, it added.

Samsung last month announced it had begun sampling 3Gb/s SATA Flash drives of 32GB and 64GB capacities. It didn't say when these drives will go into volume prioduction. It has been punching out 1.5Gb/s SSDs for six months or so now - Dell is already offering these as an option with a number of its notebooks.