GigaOM

The memory business is a volatile one, driven by consumer demand for products like MP3 players and rapid obsolescence. That’s why the gradual move of solid-state storage drives based on NAND flash memory into the PC is so interesting. Now that those drives are bigger, at 64GB and soon 128GB, memory makers can flatten out some of the volatility seen in the consumer market by putting them into corporate laptops where demand is less influenced by economic cycles.

Most solid-state memory for PCs ends up in rugged or sexy high-end laptops such as the new MacBook Air, which is offered with either an 80GB hard drive or a 64GB SSD, and the Lenovo x300, which comes with a 64GB solid-state drive made by Samsung. The lack of moving parts makes a solid-state drive much more durable for rugged machines and the smaller size of flash drives means they can allow for thinner, lighter laptops.

In addition to revealing that its solid-state drive was in the x300, Samsung has unveiled a traditional 500GB hard drive that contains three disks crammed into a 9.5 mm-high drive. Andy Higginbotham (no relation), director of hard drive sales and marketing at Samsung, says this gives Samsung a leg upon density as the competition can only fit two disks in that space.

And if a user pops two of these in a notebook, he added, suddenly they’re walking around with a terabyte of storage (that could store 120 hours of HD video or 320,000 images). In a laptop. Think about how much confidential data someone could store on it, only to have stolen out of their car. It boggles the mind.