Confused about Solid State Drives

Hello All!

I'm going to come right out and say it. I'm a newbie when it comes to Solid State Drives. I understand the principles behind them, but that's about it. Other than the obvious differences in physical appearances are there any differences in read and write times between mSATA versions of a drive and their SATA counterparts? I know the major differences being that of the physical appearances and the connectors they plug into. Are there any advantages to one over the other? Cons? Any light y'all can shed on this for me would be greatly appreciated.
CodeGunner

 

Msata is approximately 1/4 the physical size of data drives. Not up until recently could you get msata in 1TB sizes. The performance between them is negligible. The only big benefit in my opinion is using an msata slot and saving your data slot/s for platter drives for bigger storage density at a cheaper price. I sure others will chime in with more minute details.

Sent from my SM-N9005

 

There's usually little to no difference between an mSATA and SATA version of a particular model. Now, if in the laptop you have the mSATA port is SATA II and the SATA ports are SATA III, there will be differences in things like sequential read and write, however this is only a pratical problem if you plan on copying large files between two SSDs often.

Practically, the only major difference you'll see between the different interfaces is that mSATA will save you a few grams in weight and freeing up your SATA ports for other drives (say, a HDD for cheap, bulk storage).

 

There are many performance differences between mSATA and 2.5" SSD's. Some of those differences are mitigated with better firmware on the mSATA versions, but not always. An example right now is the EVO mSATA line: there is no TRIM support and even if you don't hammer the storage subsystem all day - depending on the way it is actually used, anyone and their blind dog will see the drop to ~69MB/s in sequential speeds. Yeah; 2010 era 5400RPM notebook HDD performance today (get them while they're hot).

See:
AnandTech | Samsung SSD 840 EVO mSATA (120GB, 250GB, 500GB & 1TB) Review

The major differences contributing to the 2.5" models being more productivity oriented (and much more robust against slowing the user down even in light loads) are:

1) There are more nand chips which fully and optimally populate the controller channels.
2) There is optimal interleaving of nand chips per channel.
3) The bigger size and proper enclosure helps with thermals and can prevent throttling of the SSD.


The above doesn't apply to all mSATA SSD's universally, but in general the 2.5" version will be the better (performance) choice at the same capacity.


The points made in the posts above may be valid if you're just browsing/consuming/etc. with no more than ~65% of the SSD's nominal capacity used.


Any other usage scenario will see improved performance from a fully channel populated and per channel nand interleaving.


If you have a choice to install the O/S to an mSATA or a SATA port: I would be choosing the SATA port (2.5" SSD) every time.


Of course... M.2 and NGFF will soon change all the above when true SSD speeds will be attainable for the masses (without the limitation of SATA in any form).