Solid State Drives continue to gain market share from traditional hard drives, providing users with increased performance and higher storage capacities with each new product release. Although pricing is still a considerable drawback for most computer users, Flash-based storage products do get a significant attention from enthusiasts. New designs provide alternatives for users looking for a high-performance PC that can deliver support for today's performance-demanding applications. On that note, Elecom has recently announced the debut of its new SSDs, boasting an interesting, minimalist design that will allow the drive to be inserted directly into a free SATA slot on the PC's motherboard.

Said to be available in capacities of 8GB and 16GB, these nanoSSD ESD-IDSAA Series solutions are an excellent choice for users who require a fast SSD to be used for faster system startups. The company claims that its nanoSSD can also be used as the primary drive on a compact mini-ITX setup, thanks to its small physical measurements. The drive, according to Elecom, measures 25 x 39 x 6.5 mm, being small enough to be easily lost if not attached to a SATA port.

As far as performances go, the nanoSSD from Elecom isn't exactly the fastest on the block. The drive is said to be capable of read speeds of up to 75MB/s, while write speeds reach just 30MB/s. These performance levels are somewhat to be expected from a drive this small, but even so, it could provide a solution for some computer systems.

There's no word on pricing just yet, but the drive is said to have already been made available for pre-order in Japan. The company will also included an auxiliary power cable, required in the occurrence that the Vcc pin from the SATA port isn't sufficient to power the nanoSSD.