Toshiba will start making flash-based solid-state drives for laptops, the company said Monday. The Japanese memory chip maker is trying to create more demand for flash chips, reports Reuters. Solid-state drives, which offer a faster boot-up than hard disk drives, are used in portable devices, but aren't mainstream yet in PCs due to their high cost.
Toshiba said it will produce 1.8-inch and 2.5-inch drives in May 2008. The drives will range from 32 gigabytes to 128 gigabytes of capacity. Samsung Electronics and Toshiba partner SanDisk already make solid-state drives, and Micron Technology plans to enter the market next quarter. (More hard drives stories.)