Craving for a nice piece of the solid state drive market, Imation has developed and now announced two line-up of flashy drives, the M-Class and S-Class. Coming in both 2.5-inch and 3.5-inch form factors, the SSDs have SATA interfaces (SATA 1.5Gbps for the M models, SATA 3.0Gbps for the S drives) and will arrive in 32, 64 and 128GB capacities. The M-Class drives are claimed to offer read and write speeds of about 150 MB/s and 90 MB/s respectively, while the S-Class models will reach 130 MB/s and 120 MB/s.

"We designed this new class of SSD products to deliver high-performance, rugged and stylish design, and easy installation. While SSD enthusiasts expect increased speed, they also want a product that enhances how they work and use their computer," said Subodh Kulkarni, vice president, Global Commercial Business, Imation. "With the M-Class and S-Class Solid State Drives, the computer finally works as fast its user - starting up, opening applications and finding files all happens in a fraction of the time."

In addition to the SSDs, Imation has unveiled M- and S-Class upgrade kits which will make it easy for people to migrate an operating system, applications, data, from a regular HDD to a solid state drive. A kit includes either an M-Class or S-Class SSD, a USB-to-SATA or SATA connector cable, a power cable and the Acronis True Image HD software (plus instructions).

Expected to hit the stores first, the M-Class SSD will come about in February and cost from $179.99 up. The S-Class drives and the SSD upgrade kits are set for a March release.