Crucial m4 256GB mSATA SSD Review Discussion

[Forge]

Damn. Paid $260 for my BP3. Would have liked to save a few bucks. Oh well.

[CSHawkeye81]

Yup that's it!

[Penguissimo]

Beautiful, thanks guys! Can't wait to see how fast this is...it'll be my first SSD!

[Abidderman]

Just about a year and a half ago or so, I paid $180 fro an Intel 310 80GB mSata. My tablet came with one of the SanDisk slugs. It is good to see how the pricing has come down, and this looks to be a great replacement for my Intel. Nice find and nice review.

[John Ratsey]

Just watch out for etailers trying to make a quick buck while the product is scarce. I just noticed this currently priced at £569 - over £400 more than what I paid.

John

[foxyshadis]

Looks like a great budget-priced upgrade, given that I already have a 2.5" SSD and it's OK if shipping is delayed a bit, since I haven't pulled the trigger on my new laptop yet. Can you believe the Dell XPS 14 comes with a terribly slow 30 GB one? Blows my mind, it might be better to put the O/S on a 7200 rpm drive than that.

[jaeyang9]

got my first ssd 2 years ago in my m11x r2. it was a 256gb samsung. what can I say, i loved it so much I got ANOTHER one for my desktop. now i've got an m17x r4 in production with a new 512gb samsung right here waiting to be installed.. the performance difference between hdd and ssd is THAT noticeable.

the review says:
"... Until recently mSATA SSD capacities stopped at 128GB." really? until not so recently it had already more than doubled. lol

[John Ratsey]

the review says:
"... Until recently mSATA SSD capacities stopped at 128GB." really? until not so recently it had already more than doubled. lol

Show me a mSATA (not 1.8" or 2.5") SSD that was available 6 months ago. I know that 500GB or more has been available in the 2.5" format for over two years - I bought a 512GB Kingston SNVP325 in February 2010.

John

[cyrilng]

Would this work in a Gigabyte TouchNote T1028M which has a Mini-PCIe slot (meant for a HSDPA module)?
http://asia.cnet.com/product/gigabyt...m-45056495.htm

[John Ratsey]

Would this work in a Gigabyte TouchNote T1028M which has a Mini-PCIe slot (meant for a HSDPA module)?
Review: Gigabyte T1028M Touch Note (Intel Atom N270 processor 1.6GHz; 1GB RAM) - Notebooks - CNET Asia

It won't work unless the manufacturer has made specific provision for the slot to work as both mSATA and mini PCIe. To quote from Wikipedia:

mSATA

Mini-SATA, which is distinct from the micro connector, was announced by the Serial ATA International Organization on September 21, 2009.[27] Applications include netbooks and other devices that require a smaller solid-state drive. The connector is similar in appearance to a PCI Express Mini Card interface,[28] and is electrically compatible, However the data signals (TX±/RX± SATA, PETn0 PETp0 PERn0 PERp0 PCI-express) need connection to the SATA host controller instead of the PCI-express host controller. Due to the absence of a standard for quite some time, there is still some confusion around this subject. For host devices which support either an mSATA SSD or mini-PCIe card interchangeably, this application note from NXP explains how to use a PCI-express/S-ATA router chip. This chip is essentially a four-channel bi-directional multiplexer. The vast majority of computer motherboards however have single-purpose headers which may support one of either an mSATA SSD or mini-PCIe card, but not both interchangeably.

John