Since it isn't allowed to play with matches, TDK has been toying around with NAND and, what do you know, it built something that can be sold out of the flashy chips, the SDG2A family of SSDs. Coming in both SLC (single-level cell) and MLC (multi-level cell) flavors, the former including 1, 2, 4, 8, 16 and 32GB models, and the latter 16, 32 and 64GB drives, the new 2.5-inch SSDs make use of TDK's own GBDriver RS2 SATA controller, have a SATA 3.0 Gbps interface, an auto-recovery function, a MTBF (mean time before failure) of 500,000 hours, and even provide automated 128-bit AES encryption.

According to TDK, the drives will reach a maximum read speed of 95 MB/s and a top write speed of 28 MB/s (MLC drives) or 55 MB/s (SLC models). The 2.5-inch SDG2A SSDs are expected to become available late this month, with 1.8-inch versions of the drives being planned for a later release.