There is no doubt that Intel’s mainstream family SSD drive scheduled to come in Q1 2013 will cost an arm or leg, especially in its top 1.6TB version. We are talking about 2.5 inch SATA 6Gb/s drive that is currently codenamed as Wolfsville.

We don’t know much about it but we do know that it’s based on 20nm MLC chips and that it comes in Q1 2013. The new drive should end up branded as 500 series starts at modest 60GB and it looks like it should replace the 520 series.

In the second half of 2012 the 520 series replaces the 320 series in this market segment, but this happens only “if necessary”. At this time we don’t have any performance numbers and indications how fast Wolfsville can perform, but with 1.6TB it looks like a massive drive that will probably cost well over $1,000.

Currently the largest Intel drive that we could find available, the Intel SSD 320 Series (600GB, 2.5in SATA 3Gb/s, 25nm, MLC) Internal Solid State Drive-Brown Box is selling at Sears for $1139.99. The prices of SSD storage will drop in 2012, but large drives will continue to cost a small fortune.