mSATA needed/worth it question

I just placed an order for a new Sager laptop.

I didnt choose an mSATA drive as I used a m4 Crucial 256 gb SSD + a 750 gb HD.

But Im no expert. Was this a good choice or Im missing a lot for not adding a dedicated mSATA for the OS?

 

There is no reason to use an mSATA drive with a SSD imo. Just make sure you load the OS on the SSD

 

Thanks for the info

 

I dont want to hijack your thread but I've tried to get this question answered multiple times to no avail. On the M17x I might be ordering adding a 32Gb mSATA is only $25 more with their current promotion. Regardless of what I get I'm going to be getting a 256Gb SSD. I originally planned on installing everything including the OS on the SSD but this promotion seems like a really good offer. Will the mSATA make boot time significantly slower than the SSD because it's only SATA II? If so, I won't go for it regardless of how cheap it is.

 

mSATA drives can provide a small speed boost on SSDs, and it certainly won't slow it down. $25 for a 32GB mSATA drive is a pretty good deal (but not if it's a 32Gb drive, as that would only be 4GB). I would be somewhat doubtful as to whether the marginal speed boost would be worth it, however.

 

Guys maverick1989 is correct if you already have 2 2.5" HDD bays and one has a 2.5" SSD there is no reason to get an mSATA drive at all. Use the 2.5" SSD as your main drive and the 2.5" HDD as backup. There are some people who like to use an mSATA instead of 2.5" SSD to save weight but if I am not mistaken those computers are not oriented towards saving weight.

MyDigitalSSD

 

I'm curious about the video review Xotic did of the Sager NP9170 in which the reviewer stated that they essentially used the mSATA in a RAID like combination with an Intel 520 SSD and got pretty good performance.

He initially starts talking about the mSATA drive just after the 2:00 mark and goes into more detail later at the 12:30 mark. They used HD Tune for their benchmarks and posted these results:

Intel 520 with an mSATA drive: 274, 495, 446, 902 (MB/sec Min, Max, Avg, Burst), .2ms access time

He verbally states that the Intel 520 drive alone got a maximum of 330MB/sec and an average of ~298MG/sec in the same HD Tune benchmark.

Those numbers indicate a 50% improvement in speed, which is significant if true. Can anyone back up or refute this?

I am getting my new computer (p-170em) in a week with a Samsung 830 SSD. I also have a Kingston 64gb mSATA SSD I could toss in there and experiment to see if I get a performance increase or not.

 

Since you already have the Kingston, give it a run and tell us. Personally, when I buy the 830 for ours, the mSATA is gone. At those speeds it's just not worth the extra work to manage the multiple drives in a laptop. But that's me.

 

I have a mSata in my ep121, because that is the only drive it holds. No bay for anything else. My full size lappys all have an SSD in the HDD bay for OS and some programs, HDD in the ODD bay for storage.

MSata drives are same as any SSD in that the larger they are, the faster they usually are, and have more room for overhead (such as trim). For the vast majority of users, RAID can be more problematic than anything else.

Unless you are an extreme user of video, photo editing or CAD, you will most likely not notice a difference between Sata II and Sata III. Just enjoy your SSD/HDD setup and enjoy your Lappy. And MyDigital is correct, if your Sager has room for 2 drives, plus the mSata slot, it is not a weight issue for you.

Both the M4 and th Sammy 830 are great SSD drives. Plenty fast, in fact, don't get caught up in the benches. As stated earlier, you will most likely never, ever notice the difference in speeds between the SSD choices. Just enjoy a great setup. By the way, which Sager did you get?

 

I've got it laying around so I'll attempt to set up the SRT and see how it works. It may be a week or two until I get my computer because of the 7970m issues earlier this month. I probably won't keep using it as a cache drive but rather another boot drive with Linux on it. I've always done a dual boot with both OSes on the same drive but am going to try it with switching the boot order in BIOS. Having an mSATA slot gives us a lot of options we didn't have before and I intend to play around with it to the max.

Even if i do see a performance boost when I use the mSATA card to cache the SSD I have a feeling it's going to be a lot of trouble either getting it to work properly or keeping it working properly and reliably. Or both. But like I said, I have the card and slot available so why not try it out.

 

misterhobs that is a good idea doing an SSD RAID. That would be one advantage for sure. Our BP3 mSATA series offers RAID Support just an FYI.

MyDigitalSSD

 

I might hold off on setting it up until I know how easy or hard it will be to unistall everything and revert back to original settings. There is a ton of documentation on setting it up but hardly any about uninstalling.

 

I'm also thinking about getting a clevo/sager p170. Since there isn't much difference between sataII and sataIII, would these be almost the same?

128 GB SSD in mSATA and 750 HDD drive in bay

128 SSD and HDD drive at the expensive of the optical drive.

 

How about a 32GB mSATA with a HDD?

Any benefit?