Seoul (Korea) – Samsung said it has begun mass producing 64 GB solid state disk drives (SSDs) with a 3 Gb/s SATA II interface.

According to the manufacturer, the new drives are about 60% faster than the SATA I generation and reach data read speeds of up to 100 MB/s and 80 GB/s in write processes. Power consumption remains at a level of 1.45 watts, which compares to about 2 watts of 1.8” hard drives.

“While there will always be a market for HDDs, we see growing demand for our new SSDs, especially now that they are available with the SATA II interface,” said Jim Elliott, director, flash marketing, Samsung Semiconductor. “SSD technology is especially viable for the business and high-end consumer notebook markets because of its outstanding performance, as well as the added value gained from virtually no downtime and faster operating speeds.”

The SATA II drive is shipping now and will be commercially available soon in “select Dell and Alienware notebooks,” Samsung said.