On Monday, electronics maker Samsung stated that it could deliver a 256 gigabyte solid state hard drive for 2009.

According to Macworld UK, Samsung is due to ship samples of a 128 gigabyte solid state drive in the middle of this year. These samples will be directed only towards hardware makers. Per Jim Elliott, vice president of memory marketing for Samsung Semiconductor, the company will continue to work with firms like Lenovo and Dell to create solid state drives in capacities from 64 to 128 gigabytes.

Elliott declined to comment as to additional details concerning the 256 gigabyte solid state drives or when Samsung would make its units directly available to the consumer markets, but did state that Samsung is trying to double the capacity of its solid state drives every 12 months.

Solid state drives are promising in that the units are lightweight, power-efficient, fast and use no moving parts, which makes them ideal for laptops. According to Samsung, the company's SATA II SSD drive is two to five times faster than conventional hard drives, weighs 0.07 pounds and consumes 30% less power than a typical hard drive.

Though currently somewhat cost-prohibitive, this situation could change provided prices stabilize in the NAND flash memory market, according to Elliott.

If a 256 gigabyte hard drive became feasible, this also may become a build-to-order option on notebooks like Apple's recently-released MacBook Air, a move which would quadruple the capacity of the 64 gigabyte solid state drive available as an option for the unit.

If you have any thoughts or ideas on this, let us know over in the comments or forums.