Effectiveness of mSATA as an OS drive

I just purchased a new laptop and am pleased with everything about it except I couldn't afford an ssd put in it atm. It does have an msata slot however. Not knowing much about msata, I will ask you guys. How effective would an msata be as an os drive and would there be much if a difference at all from a Sata ii msata vs a sata iii hdd for boot times? Thanks

 

Most mSATA SSDs run at SATAII speeds (though there are some expensive ones that run at SATAIII speeds), and pretty much any mechanical hard drive can't even break SATAI speeds in real-life usage. So I'd say that mSATA > HDD, hands down.

On my Intel 320 160GB (SATAII), I was about to get my boot time down to 25 seconds, and I'm not expecting much more improvement with my new Intel 330 (SATAIII). this is because boot times have a hard limit on how far you can speed them up, and this limit comes from how long it takes for your computer to run through POST.

 

If you put an mSata SSD in it for the OS and certain programs, and use the HDD for data, you will be very happy. The mSata IS an SSD, and as stated above, there is no comparison between an SSD and a HDD. I would advise you to get at least a 128GB mSata, and make sure it is Sata II, because speeds on small SSD, be it mSata or 2.5' SSD's are slower, in fact sometimes frustratingly slow. Plus, that will allow you to put not only the OS on it, but programs you need/use frequently too. And still have some room for over provisioning.

I have an mSata in my tabby, and it only has that slot, so I have to make do with only 80GB's, but on my other lappys, I use SSD and HDD configs. The speed of the mSata is faster than my full size Intel X-25m, and all of my SSD's make me wonder how I dealt with HDD's. You will enjoy.

Also, to speed up boot times, make sure you do a clean install, so you don't get all the bloat that comes pre-installed, taking up time in the boot process.

As a note, I have a windows 7 install on my tablet that is about 8.5 GB's in size, and on my Asus G73, using a Corsair 128GB Nova a couple of years back, was able to get just under 11 seconds for boot times. Of course that was when SSD's were still relatively new, tweaks were the word of the day, and I disabled a ton of stuff to get there. In everyday usage now, all of my laptops are very fast to start up, but I have enabled those things I need to use on a daily basis. Everything else I either make delayed startup or manual, if I might need them at some time during the week.

 

This is relevant to my interests, as my recent desktop build has an mSATA slot nearly dead-center on the motherboard, and I've been wondering what one is supposed to do with it.

As you suggest above, the mSATA slot is limited to SATA II. Of course, yes, even a "mere" SATA II SSD is going to put any mechanical drive to shame.

(My boot drive is an Intel Series 520 SSD, on one of the board's (GA-Z77-DS3H) SATA III ports. Yes, it's stupidly fast.).

Not totally sure what the appeal is of having an mSATA connection on a desktop mobo. Maybe if you want to build a super-compact system, using the bare minimum of cables?

 

I've figured that those mainboard mSATA slots were meant to be used as a sort of cache. Yet again, if you're building a desktop, why not go for a full-blown 2.5" SSD as your boot drive (or possibly only drive, if you have money to burn for a 512GB+ SSD ).

 

yeah, i believe those are for low-capacity (~30gb) ssd cache drives, speed up your boot and load times on a budget.

 

I believe they're doing that with some laptops now. For example, when I was in Costco last weekend, I noticed a (Samsung?) machine. It was of the new Ultrabook type, and listed not just the normal mechanical HDD, but also a 16 GB SSD.

16 GB is insufficient for Windows 7, so one presumes they are doing some sort of caching/ReadyBoost type scheme with that SSD. And it's probably mSATA, since "ultrabooks" likely don't have room for a second 2.5" drive.

 

I have an ENVY 17-3290nr with the INTEL 80 Gb mSATA II. SSD . It ONLY has the OS and programs on it, plenty of extra room for more. All my data, music, movies, and other stuff (recovery) is on a separate HDD drive. I have another SSD III for games, astronomy programs, CAD, photo and video editing, the programs that benefit from the speed of the SSD III.
You should NEVER install games to your C (OS) drive.

The Intel 80 mSATA gives me a boot time of 12 seconds, plenty fast for me. It doesn't have the fastest SEQUENTIAL write time, but that doesn't matter as the writes are RANDOM writes as the OS and programs update.

Get the free Intel SSD Toolbox and other good free programs here:
Utility Tools


.............

 

I have a 120GB mSATA, SATA III with an unclocked Sandforce controller and 500mb/s read and write speeds. I'll test out how it is as an OS drive tomorrow.

 

Oh please, there's absolutely nothing wrong with installing games to the C: drive. I did it on my recent desktop build, because I wanted to benefit from the stupid-fast load times of the SATA III SSD that is so far the system's only drive.

Some older games load so quickly anyway, that I leave them on a spinning-platters drive. Or will, when I put one in the new machine. Others are too big. It doesn't take all that long to fill a 120 GB drive.

I was thinking of putting an SSD in my Samsung notebook, but I don't think I will. Number one, I don't have the money to spare. Number two, it boots, sleeps, and resumes very very quickly with the "mere" 5400 RPM mechanical HDD.

With an SSD, I might get some extra battery life and maybe slightly faster cold boots. Not worth the expense at this point.

 

mSATA is the way to go. MUCH faster than any HDDs.

The famous Crucial M4 (Micron C400, very reliable) is available as mSATA. Here is a small comparison:

C400 128GB (SATA II)



WD Scorpio Black 500GB (a very fast HDD)

 

I heard power consumption is much lower than 1.8'' and 2.5'' SSD's. Is this true?

 

My mSATA SSD boots in just under 20 seconds, that's with no tweaks and at least twice as fast as most platter drives. The mSATA is perfect for a boot drive as you don't need a ton of space for the OS, but having the option for a platter drive for storage where speed isn't as critical is a nice option.

 

Well the mSATA I have, the Mushkin Atlas is supposedly among the fastest of all SSDs out there. But it uses SandForce which means it uses a lossless compression to reduce read/write. That means for incompressible data, it suffers. But for some reason on the P150EM's mSATA port, it suffers by 50% for both read and write. For compressible, it flies. Luckily almost all sequential and random read/write for every day use is compressible data.

As you can see, the mSATA port on the P150EM is SATA 2, though at SATA 3 this drive is over 550 read/write.

 

Sure, an mSATA (recommend 240GB or larger) SSD will decrease your boot times - but Win8 will too (drastically - and possibly more than an SSD would...).

What exactly do you use/expect your system to do for you?

Do you simply want 'snappiness/responsiveness'? (Again, Win8 may very well win here vs. Win7 + SSD).

The actual configuration of your system matters too... what level of platform are you running and on what O/S?

With the current $15 Win8 'upgrade' offer with a new Win7 system purchase - your money would be more wisely spent (for the best bang/buck) on that than an SSD at this point.

Sure, both Win8 and an SSD really fly and put every else to shame - but that is another question for another time...

Hope some of this helps?

(Looking forward to seeing your specific setup configuration...).

Good luck.