dm4 - mSSD 32G + 500G 7200RPM option

I am considering buying the dm4 and I am looking at the hard drive options and I am unsure what mSSD 32G + 500G 7200RPM means. I would like to get a ssd, so I am curious how this option performs, what it does specifically, and if it would be a good idea to get it. Thanks!

 

It's a micro-SATA (mSATA) SSD drive that is used as a boot partition with a 500G 7200RPM hard disk for storage. The idea is that a lot of the benefit of an SSD comes from having your OS on it, with somewhat less benefit from having your applications on it (though this is highly dependent on what they are and how you use them). So you get some the perks of an SSD without paying much of a price premium.

Personally I prefer a full-blown SSD with an external HD for storage and went for the 160 GB SSD option, but the mSSD alternative seems like a perfectly good one.

 

It means they are going to put your operating system on the 32GB SSD, and they are also going to install a 500GB 7,200 RPM hard drive for regular storage. Depending on the SSD, they often perform better than regular hard drives, so if you go with this setup, your computer will boot and load the operating system faster because it will be on the SSD. You computer will not, however, load things from the 500GB hard drive quite as fast. You can put applications on the SSD for faster loading, but considering that it only has 32GB of space, you won't be able to fit nearly as much on it as you would with the 500GB hard drive(which is still pretty fast at 7,200RPM).

The performance between the SSD and the 7,200RPM hard drive is rarely noticeable. If you're on a budget I suggest you just go with a good ol' hard drive. But if you have the money to spend on it, then why not?

EDIT: Ninja'd by Aquitaine. xD

 

I have also bought the dm4T with the mSSD 32gb + 500gb 7.2k rpm option but wondering on how my notebook utilizes it.
This is my first mSSD drive and my knowledge is that is just like a physical drive like when one replaces a hard drive with an SSD drive.
However, I looked at Windows Explorer, Device Manager and HD partitioning programs and it does not show the mSSD drive.
I can see that HP installed Windows 7 in the C: drive (500mb).
I called HP TechSupport and did not give me any convincing answers, they just said its there to speed things up.
Since it is not showing in Device Manager, I thought HP forgot to add this.
But when I opened the bottom cover, the mSSD card was there beside the wifi lan card.
The notebook does indeed boot/shutdown fast but I think its because of the InsideH20 bios. Is it being used for memory/apps caching?
If it is, isn't 32gb a bit big cache for this?
I also checked Windows virtual memory and its using 16gb (same as my DDR3 memory) on the C: drive.

 

Someone can confirm this?
I want to buy this machine, I want to format and put Linux, OS on SSD and DATA on HDD, i can do it? or mSATA is only for cache?