Fastest SSD twice as fast as best HDD?

Over the weekend in Taipei, Samsung announced that it plans to have a 256GB solid state drive out in mass production by the end of this year in 1.8" and 2.5" sizes.

Not only a good feat in the storage capacity department, Samsung also claims using its own MLC flash RAM and SATA-II interface that its upcoming SSD will be able to hit massive read speeds of 200MB/s (yes - megabytes per second) and sequential read rates of 160MB/s.

As noted in the report by TG Daily, the fastest consumer hard drive on the market at the moment is Western Digital's VelociRaptor 3.5" 300GB hard disk drive and according to other hardware website that tested it, it has an average read speed of 100MB/s. Current SSD's on the market and ones tested by us see average read speeds of around 130MB/s at best. If Samsung's claims are true, its upcoming SSD drives will smash everything else that is out on the market at the moment.

There were no details released on pricing but current 256GB SSD drives can exceed $5000 where as a 300GB WD Raptor drive will set you back about $300.