SanDisk Corp. (http://www.sandisk.com) has begun shipping its SanDisk G3 Solid State Drives (SSD) to retailers in North America and Europe. The flash memory-based SanDisk G3 SSD offers an alternative to a 7,200 RPM hard disk drive (HDD) for some customers.

The 120GB SanDisk G3 SSD can endure up to 80TB of data written to it over its lifetime, says says Eric Bone, vice president, retail product marketing, SanDisk. The solid state drives open files up to twice as fast as a 7,200 RPM HDD, he adds.

SanDisk G3 SSD has sequential performance of up to 220 megabytes per second (MB/sec) read speed and up to 120MB/sec write speed. SanDisk G3 SSD is compatible with Mac OS X 10.6 (“Snow Leopard”).

SanDisk G3 SSD is available now in 60GB and 120GB capacities with prices of US$229.99 and $399.99, respectively. The drive will be available at retailers in North America and Europe soon, with exact pricing to be set by retailers.