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The company claims that enterprise customers are 'banging on the door' for its new 2.5in 32GB flash drive, which will initially be sold only to OEMs, but will be made available in retail later this year.

But Sandisk claims there isn't the same pent up demand for hybrid drives, which include a few gigabytes of flash memory alongside the traditional hard disk. 'A hybrid drive does have its advantages, but it's not conclusive whether those advantages are really worth it. You still have a six hundred to one ratio of magnetic media to

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flash - you're still basically using a a hard disk, and you still have the problems of a hard disk,' says Seth Greenberg, director of PR at Sandisk.

The company claims that solid state disks offer considerable performance, power and cooling advantages. It demonstrated the 32GB drive being used to boot Windows Vista Enterprise in a shade over 30 seconds, around 10-15 seconds faster than a conventional drive. Greenberg claims the drive only draws around half of the power of an equivalent 2.5in magnetic drive, or around 0.4 Watts, which should lead to around 20-30 minutes extra battery life from a laptop.

The big problem with flash hard disks is, of course, the costly price per gigabyte. Sandisk says the 32GB drive will cost OEMs around $350, and they expect to have a 64GB model before the end of the year. Greenberg says Sandisk is in negotiations with all the major notebook OEMs and should be in a position to announce partners within the next few months.

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