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Plextor, the company that is mostly known for its optical disc drive (ODD) products, plans to start selling solid-state drives (SSDs) in February, 2010. The move is rather surprising, considering that the area of Plextor’s expertise is completely different, however, since the market of SSDs is expected to grow rather rapidly, Plextor may be interested in jumping on solid-state storage bandwagon.
Plextor has already revealed that its first-generation SSDs will be available in 64GB and 128GB capacities, will come in 2.5” form-factor and will sport Serial ATA II interconnection, but did not unveil any additional details. The company, nonetheless, said that its solid-state drives feature “Plextor’s unique Wear Leveling algorithm”, which “prevents degradation of drive performance and prolong product life”. Based on the description it is highly likely that Plextor’s SSD support Trim instruction that is also featured on premium solid-state drives from Corsair or OCZ Technology.
According to The Tech Report web-site, the first generation of Plextor’s SSDs had already been qualified to use by Dell, which may mean that initially Plextor will target OEMs with its SSDs. It is also reported that in Summer the company plans to release second-generation solid-state drives powered by Marvell controller and Toshiba NAND flash memory.
Plextor has been attempting to enter a variety of new markets for several years now, but the company is still mostly known for optical disc drives. It should be noted, however, that profit margins of ODDs has declined considerably in the last few years, whereas profit margin of SSDs is rather high nowadays.
