Another nail was banged into the coffin of the hard disk drive today with Toshiba set to ship a notebook with a half terabyte solid state drive, due for New Zealand release in June.

Solid state hard drives (SSDs) use the same flash memory technology as the memory chip you slot into your digital camera.

SSDs have a number of clear advantages over hard disk drives, including the fact they boot and run Windows and other software faster; they run silent; they take less space; they draw less power; and they’re much less prone to failure.

Against this, SSDs have (so far) been low-capacity, and mouth wateringly expensive.

Now, Toshiba has overcome the first problem.

While many flash drive-equipped netbooks have Flash drives as small as 8GB, and full-size notebooks 64GB or 128GB, Toshiba’s new Portégé R600 will come with a 512GB SSD - easily the world’s largest.

As for the price issue ... well, they’re still working on it. It’s super-sized SSD helps plump the Portégé R600’s price to $6549 for its New Zealand release next month.

Beyond its SSD, the Portégé R600 will weigh just over 1kg, but feature a relatively wide form factor (19.5mm to 25.5mm) for an ultraportable notebook, accommodating a 12.1-inch display. The R600 will also feature built-in 3G.