Imation to Release its Own Solid-State Drive Offering

CD and DVD manufacturer Imation has just introduced its newest line of storage media based on NAND flash memory. The company is mostly known for its CD, DVD optical media and the tape backup products, and the new SSD offering is a shot at a completely new market.

The Imation-branded solid-state drives are built with high-performance NAND flash chips from the South Korean Mtron Company, one of the first pioneers in the SSD industry. Imation's solid-state offering includes the high-end MOBI 3000 Series disk drives, and the PRO 7000 Series for enterprise and corporate use.

The MOBI 3000 units come with Mtron's NAND flash chips, that deliver ultra-high performance that proves to be impressive even when compared to other SSD models from other manufacturers, let alone the old spinning platters. For instance, the Imation SSD MOBI 3000 provides maximum read speeds of 100MB per second, maximum write speeds of 80MB per second, while the random access time ranges at about 0.1ms, which qualifies the drive for the fastest SSD product in the consumer market.

The drive is especially suitable for users who work with graphics, video and other drive-intensive applications. Speed may be the most important aspect of the MOBI 3000 drive, but that's not it. The drive weighs less than half the weight of a conventional hard drive, while significantly cutting down energy requirements.

Imation's second solid-state drive, the PRO 7000 comes with Mtron's patented controller technology, that can achieve maximum read speeds of 120MB per second, maximum write speeds of 90MB per second, and random access time of less than 0.1ms. The Pro 7000 is especially designed to perform high capacity transactions, and accelerates the drive-intensive applications, while preserving its power efficiency. The Pro 7000 series can be successfully used in datacenter environments, where data security is a critical aspect. The drive has been rated for a Mean Time Before Failure (MTBF) greater than one million hours.

The drives are already shipping on the US market. The MOBI 3000 model sells for $700, while the professional PRO 7000 drive comes with a price tag of $1,160.