mSATA SSD or 2.5" SSD

I am considering to upgrade my HDD to SSD. But I trying to decide between mSATA SSD and 2.5" SSD. The largest size I can find is 512GB for 2.5", but only 160GB for mSATA.

Can I get performance benefit from installing two SSDs (one mSATA for OS, one 2.5" for data)? Or I just need only one 2.5"(OS and data)?

Any response is appreciated.
Thanks!

 

It depends If you would be needing more than 512GB of space. I would think that 1 SSD is sufficient.

 

Skye2, thanks for your reply.

Do you know if the mSATA bus in M4600 is capable of 6Gb/s, just like the SATA bus for 2.5"?

 

The mSATA bus in the M6600 is only 3Gbps capable, I would hazard a guess that the M4600 would be the same story. My mSATA drive takes full advantage of that throughput though, so I am happy with its performance.

 

I think it depends on what you are planning to do. If I don't program, photo/video editing or play games and merely browse the web, I believe even 64GB mSATA is probably sufficient.

I have some recorded video + photo that I am trying to mess with, those easily takes up a few hundred GB. If you also plan to program + running virtual machine, your space requirement, not to mention probable memory requirement will be quite high.

I just uninstalled Visual Studio 2010 on my old laptop and going to migrate to my new laptop (m4600), I can fit OS + Visual studio + necessary driver + other necessary programs such as adobe flash, acrobat, 7zip, etc. all within 64GB. Unfortunately, that means I can't do much with it. I think 128GB is enough for programmers, unless you plan on running virtual machine (which I assume will probably take at least 30-40GB disk space per virtual machine as you install the VM's necessary OS and programs to test your code)

I am planning to get a 64GB mSATA drive to complement my HDD (which is 250GB or 500GB). That will be enough for me to do some virtual machine and store some work in progress videos and photo. with USB 3.0, you can migrate a lot of files over. My western digital passport USB 3.0 external can produce over 60MB/second transfer rate with my M4600 USB 3.0 port. You can just migrate files you don't use often over to an external drive and only keep often used files on your HDD.

I think mSATA is more flexible as it does not take up your regular HDD space, give you more flexibility.

If you game a lot (which I don't), then maybe a 300GB regular 2.5" SSD is a better choice. Some of those games are monstrous and you need to keep them on a fast HDD.

 

Just curious, which msata drive offers 160gb?
Biggest I've seen so far was 128GB..

 

Actually, I'd like to know too. I thought there was supposed to be a 160GB 310, but now that I look around it doesn't look like such a thing exists.

In general, the way I see this is that if you aren't going to do an SSD + HDD combo (or if you're keen on spending tons of money with marginal benefit, SSD + SSD combo), there's no point in paying more per GB for an msata drive.

 

Actually the mSata drive is cheaper per GB than most SSD drives with solid reliability. The only catch is that you have to buy it when you buy the M4600 or M6600 to get that savings.