Sandisk today rolled out a 32GB flash-based hard drive made for commercial notebook computers. These new, 1.8-inch drives store data on flash memory chips instead of the usual magnetic platters on hard drives.

These smaller drives promise smaller, possibly more efficient notebooks but the company has refused to disclose which manufacturers will be integrating these new drives. It did say however that notebooks sporting the drive may come out as early as the first half of 2007.

Manufacturers however, will first need to balance the relatively small storage capacity of these drives and the reported steep production costs.

Via CNET