7mm-Thick Solid-State Drives Released by Mushkin

Even though ultrabooks have been selling poorly, notebook component makers continue to release products advertised as suitable to or ideal for such ultrathin personal computers.

Mushkin is the one taking its turn at trying to cash in on the ill-fated (thus far) trend, by releasing a thin solid-state drive series.

Called Mushkin Chronos Deluxe Solid-State Drives (SSDs), they measure 7mm in thickness, which is the new “standard” for slim notebooks.

We can't see them competing against Western Digital's 5mm HDDs, even with the faster performance of NAND to consider, but they don't have to, not for a while.

WD's 5mm drives are nice, but they will only enter mass production near the end of the year (2012), which means that Mushkin only has other SSD makers to contend with while the first half of the pre-Haswell phase is still in effect.

"Our new 7 mm line of slim drives allows users to experience true performance without compromise," said Brian Flood, director of product development at Mushkin, Inc.

"With enthusiasts in mind, we continue to develop some of the highest performance storage devices on the market. Our products go beyond the needs of gamers, and provide a solution that delivers the performance needed for just about any application."

Mushkin's solid-state drives are shipping worldwide, which means they are either available online and through retailers or almost ready to be put up for order.

All of them communicate over the SATA III interface (SATA 6.0 Gbps) and use synchronous MLC (multi-level cell) NAND Flash chips.

A SandForce controller powers the SSDs (the transfer speeds are of up to 560 MB/s when reading and up to 515 MB/s for writing) and the capacities are of 60 GB, 90 GB, 120 GB, 180 GB, 240 GB and 480 GB.

No prices are known, though Mushkin did mention a 3-year warranty. More info can be found here, on the product page.