P157sm and the second mSata

Ordered my system in September and got the reply from my local dealer that either I would have to configure a system, or I would have to wait for preconfigured models coming in. Supposedly those were ones with ironed - out msata issues on the main board I was told.
I wanted at least a 4800mq processor with vt-d, so I configured the system myself and got exactly what I wanted, knowing that I should probably stay away from that second mSata bay.
Later on I started seeing different results in forums about peoples experiences, so I figure I wanted to try for myself. Now my system is supposed to be from an earlier batch of motherboards, and when I returned to my local retailer and spesifically asked about the upgrade, I was again told that the second mSata would not work and that they were sorry for the inconvenience. No problem. Their web site stated clearly that the system had 1 msata, so no misinformation there, just a little vague on the info maybe.... Like every other retailer
So , in short , as you see from my signature I bought a second mSata, a Crucial M500 240GB mSata, and installed it. Today it's been 10 days of more or less continous operation, and the disk PERFORMS PERFECTLY.
I have seen comments on the kind of disk you use, so in that case I would have to recommend the Crucial M500 mSata ( Besides just plainly recommending it, it seems like a great disk and the price is very good).

 

Thanks for the recommendation on the Crucial M500, glad to hear that one is working.

The 2nd mSATA slot has always technically worked, but has a chance to drop data. There are a few drives out that have been reported to work real well. Wonder if it has anything to do with a controller issue like how SSD's used to have issues if there were SandForce vs Marvell.

 

I think it is down to controller and the marvel drives are usually pretty compatible. Just no retailer can really validate like clevo so we just have to say its not working in such cases.

 

Side - note : I am really quite impressed with the m500 msata. I read up before buying, so I did have hopes of it working, but in addition iops numbers seem great for a msata( or any disk for that matter). Just a heads up to people looking at the 120 GB version. Check out AnandTech | The Crucial/Micron M500 Review (960GB, 480GB, 240GB, 120GB). Because of the bigger and fewer nand die on the disks, paralellism can not be exploited as well as earlier smaller disks, which means sweet spot for disk size is at least 240Gb, and preferably 480GB. If it holds true for the 2.5 ssd I guess there is no way around it for the mSata also.

 

That's true yes, you basically have to double the size of the old models to get the increase of speed from a new controller since each die now holds twice as much data and it's the number of die rather than their capacity that impacts performance.