Intel has just showcased pre-production units of its upcoming large-capacity solid-state drives, expected to kick in during the second quarter of the year.

Solid-state drives are extremely popular among mobile computer users, as they are touted to be more reliable, more resistant to physical damage and faster than the "obsolete" hard-disk drives. Intel was expected to join the large-capacity SSD manufacturers crowd, as it has already unveiled its tiny flash chips in the Z series for ultra-mobile PCs and handheld devices.

Intel's Knut Grimsrud described, on the company's blog, the main differences between using solid-state storage media and conventional hard-disk drives. According to his blog posts, he tested one of Intel's pre-production units, that manged to impress him in terms of data transfer speeds and reliability.

"I played the part of Guinea Pig and had one of our pre-production solid state drives installed in my IT laptop...I was unprepared for the powerful instant high it gave my system," he wrote in a blog post. He then reported a dramatic improvement in terms of performance not only in storing and fetching data, but rather on the entire system. It was a "dramatic difference in how my system responded," he continued.

Intel is currently shipping its small-capacity Z-PATA solid-state flash chips with Thin Small Outline Packages technology, that can store up to 16 GB of data. However, they are aimed at a different market, since they are to be soldered directly to the motherboard, due to their miniature size.

This way, the mainstream consumer will have a hard time in adopting Intel's products, because they cannot swap the conventional hard-disk drive with a similar SSD unit from Intel. However, Intel is expected to deliver 1.8- and 2.5-inch form-factors of its solid-state storage products in capacities ranging from 80 to 160 GB.