Dell is now offering a 1.8-inch 32GB solid state drive (SSD) from SanDisk on Latitude D420 ultra-mobile and D620 ATG semi-rugged notebooks. The company is one the first to offer a flash-based drive as an alternative to hard disk drives (HDD) on corporate notebooks.

The company says SSD will be offered across next generation Latitude notebooks, citing better reliability, increased performance and noise reduction as the main drivers for the introduction of flash-based drives.

A SSD is a hard drive alternative based on flash memory. Unlike a traditional HDD which uses spinning discs and read/write heads, a SSD is designed with flash memory with no moving parts. The new drive has the same shape and size as a HDD and uses the same connectors for integration into existing systems.

Engineering tests show that the SSD has an operating shock tolerance of up to 1,300 Gs, which is twice the rating of mechanical drives. The drives are also predicted to reduce the probability of failure by three-and-one-half times compared to standard mechanical drives.

The new drives can also increase system performance by up to 23 percent5 and decreases boot time by up to 34 percent compared to traditional HDDs available with the Latitude D420 and D620 ATG6.

The SSD drives are available now at a list price of US$549 in the Americas Availability will soon follow in Europe and Asia.