What is a micro hard drive?

I was referred over here from desktop review.

The Lenovo M92Z (AIO) similar to a notebook computer offers a micro hard drive.


Lenovo - Customize your ThinkCentre M92z 20" All-in-one

2.5" 16GB SSD mSATA Hard Drive

Here is the description:

With this drive will the boot time be the same as if I had a standalone SSD?
A Lenovo rep said not, but I wanted to make sure. The information I have gotten from them has not always been right.


Will the time it takes to do other things be the same as if I had a standalone SSD?

 

This is what a mSATa SSD loks like: Newegg.com - Intel 310 Series 40GB mSATA mSATA (mini PCIe form factor) MLC Enterprise Solid State Disk SSDMAEMC040G2C1 - Enterprise SSD.

That 16GB drive is probably used as a cache, that is that there won't be anything installed on the mSATA SSD, but your most used programs and part of the OS will be cached on it. If you get a larger capacity mSATA SSD, then you'd be able to install the OS on it and use it as any SSD as well as get the same speed as a SSD using the same type of SATA interface.

 

So in other words, definitely no shorter Windows boot time.

I know this is a tough question.

Off the top of the head estimate, what percentage difference speed could I could I expect with programs running?

It is $225.00. Not sure it is worth it.

 

225$ for what capacity, 16GB?, if it's 64GB, you could always format and install windows on the the msata drive and use it as a regular SSD There'salso the price of the caching software to take into consideration.

 

Wow, $225 for a 64GB mSata SSD. You could go external ODD, and replace the ODD with a caddy and a fast HDD for storage and put a 2.5" SSD in the HDD slot. Or for $225, you could get a 2.5" SSD like a 256GB M4 or Sammy 830 and have room and speed and keep the ODD if you wish.

2 years ago or so, when SSDs really started to become more mainstream, using some tweaks and such, I was able to get just over 10 seconds on startup. But that used a lot of manual start and disabled processes on my Corsair Nova 128. I have SSDs in all my laptops and my tabby. There are a lot of things I use it for that are way faster, and some things that after loading or installing, I don't notice any difference. It all depends what you use it for. But SSD drives usually follow this rule: the larger they are, the faster they are. Write and read speeds are faster if it is bigger, and the larger they are, the more room for over provisioning they have, thus keeping them in top form. As they say, go big or go home. And once you go from a HDD to just about any SSD, you will notice the difference. But going from one SSD to another, you might not notice any difference in real life.