What size/type/interface of SSD for a new Dell Latitude E7440?

The variety of form factors in SSDs and in notebooks laptops in general has me confused! =/

I bought my first SSD about four years ago to replace the aging, hot-running Seagate 7200rpm drive in my old Dell Latitude E6400. I chose a Samsung 830-series and it was in a case that made it similar in size to the mechanical drive it was replacing. It was a no-brainer to install and setup and has since been transplanted to another E6400 after the motherboard died in the first system. To this day, it still boots Win7 in less than 25 seconds and performs flawlessly in every way I could possibly ask or expect.

About two years ago, I decided to upgrade to a Latitude 6430u (Dell's first business ultrabook) and it came with a 128GB SSD standard. To achieve the 0.81" thickness of this model, the Samsung SSD doesn't look like a hard drive at all. It plugs into a slot on the motherboard and looks more like a large wifi card or something than a system drive. It plugs into the MB via a port called mSATA.

I have just ordered a new Latitude E7440 from Dell Outlet. I couldn't pass it up at $578 (with coupon) for a system priced at $1600+ on the regular business site just a few months ago! I got everything I wanted (including the FHD 1920x1080 touch display, Win7 Pro, a perfectly adequate i5-4310U processor and the Intel AC-wifi card with Bluetooth and 8GB RAM). The main system drive (or hard drive) is the only piece of hardware that I plan to upgrade immediately. It has the standard 500GB 5400rpm mechanical drive and I want an SSD for the speed and battery savings.

So, even though my new E7440 is only 0.8" thick, it appears that it can accept a regular-sized laptop hard drive. I'm thinking that it may just be a repeat of replacing the hard drive with SSD in my E6400 four years ago. It will use the same connector that the hard drive uses and not the odd mSATA plug found on my 6430u. Right?

I'm only getting a 128GB SSD because I have plenty of space on my current 128GB (less than 30% used including Windows files and program files). I have a 2TB Seagate USB 3.0 external drive that I use for all data storage. All of the research I did more than four years ago convinced me to go with the Samsung 830 because of consistent performance and because Samsung manufactures their own memory controllers, making the unique among SSD manufacturers. Should I be looking at a new Samsung model to install in my E7440? What other affordable 128GB drives can anyone recommend?

Thanks in advance!

 

I recommend almost anything Crucial. Skip the Samsung.

 

Crucial MX200 will be good

 

SanDisk is what I would recommend at 480GB or larger.

See:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/9258/crucial-mx200-250gb-500gb-1tb-ssd-review

 

Putting aside the question of which brand of SSD (although I find lower idle power consmption by Samsung (840 EVO) compared to Crucial (M550)) and moving to the basic question of the SSD size, the E7440 gives you two storage options: (i) The 2.5" drive bay which the HDD uses (if provided) and the WWAN / mSATA slot.

If the E7440 doesn't have the WWAN card then an mSATA SSD can be used together with whatever is in the main drive bay. While the main drive bay has the 2.5" footprint, I think Dell only ship this notebook with the 500GB 5mm thick HDDs and don't recommend thicker drives. However, I believe that people have found that a 7mm thick drive (most 2.5mm SSDs are this thickness) will just about fit (you will have to read through this thread to confirm this).

When Dell ship an E7440 with an SSD they use an mSATA SSD in a plastic frame they call an "interposer" in the main storage bay). You can see this on the photo here. (The main storage bay is on the left side of the photo and the WWAN card is just to its right).

John