mSATA longevity

E

endlesszeal

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jul 4, 2007
Messages
135
i was contemplating buying a NUC or something similar, but I never paid much attention to the specs when the storage options noted only mSATA. after searching forums to see which mSATA drive is best, someone pointed out that M2 is replacing mSATA. then i started to notice that many drives are being released as M2 and not much mSATA anymore.

now my question is, should i be worried about mSATA being phased out? a couple of machines, laptop/NUC, only have one storage and that is only one mSATA slot. i feel like it is moot at this point because mSATA has been so prevalent these past couple years that even 5-8 years down the line, there should be drives available at reasonable prices should the hard drive fail. still, is this a concern?

questions comments?

thanks!
 
M.2 has been replacing it indeed, so I wouldn't expect too much that far down the line. Most of the NUC models are available in a version that has a 2.5" drive bay if you didn't know. You will still be able to find replacements on eBay in years to come, but maybe not so much new from a retailer.
 
yea mSATA is dead. It is like IDE now and won't ever be added to anything new again since M.2 is replacing it.
 
mSATA was never that prevalent. If you have the option of going m2 then go m2. If not then buy a decent msata drive and just keep it in the system.
 
thanks for the reply guys.

the funny thing is, i tried looking for an mSATA to M2 adapter, but there doesnt seem to be any. however, there are plenty of M2 to mSATA adapters. so now the question is, will there be adapters when mSATA is EOL from every SSD vendor.

im keen on mSATA because i ran into a pretty good deal for a NUC for $190 with haswell i3 4xxxU processor. ive been thinking of buying it to use as a cheap Plex server with a couple of extra hard drives. im currently using an ITX 4790k housed a BitFenix Prodigy, but it's much too big and power hungry for my taste.
 
endlesszeal said:
thanks for the reply guys.

the funny thing is, i tried looking for an mSATA to M2 adapter, but there doesnt seem to be any. however, there are plenty of M2 to mSATA adapters. so now the question is, will there be adapters when mSATA is EOL from every SSD vendor.

im keen on mSATA because i ran into a pretty good deal for a NUC for $190 with haswell i3 4xxxU processor. ive been thinking of buying it to use as a cheap Plex server with a couple of extra hard drives. im currently using an ITX 4790k housed a BitFenix Prodigy, but it's much too big and power hungry for my taste.
Click to expand...

I've seen msata to sata which can then be adapted to usb, so if file recovery is the worry you should be fine.
 
endlesszeal said:
thanks for the reply guys.

the funny thing is, i tried looking for an mSATA to M2 adapter, but there doesnt seem to be any. however, there are plenty of M2 to mSATA adapters. so now the question is, will there be adapters when mSATA is EOL from every SSD vendor.

im keen on mSATA because i ran into a pretty good deal for a NUC for $190 with haswell i3 4xxxU processor. ive been thinking of buying it to use as a cheap Plex server with a couple of extra hard drives. im currently using an ITX 4790k housed a BitFenix Prodigy, but it's much too big and power hungry for my taste.
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The thing is mSATA is .. SATA.

M.2 can support SATA(shitty) or PCIe(awesome)
 
extide said:
The thing is mSATA is .. SATA.

M.2 can support SATA(shitty) or PCIe(awesome)
Click to expand...

Yeah thats why im kinda hesitant with buying into old mSATA due to M2 with NVMe being the future. Also, thats why i was kinda hoping there would be a lot of mSATA to M2 adapters. Regardless, I managed to find one:

http://www.bplus.com.tw/Adapter/M2MS1.html

Hopefully in the future there will be solutions, but this one seems to fit the bill pretty good.

My main concern is that if I buy the NUC im looking at, it only has one internal port and that is the mSATA which is almost obsolete. But as other have mention, there will be options on ebay and I found an adapter. So basically, my concern is almost moot now since it'll be down the road and I think if I do run into something, I can replace the broken drive with ebay or adapter.
 
mSATA never took off, which is why you aren't seeing a lot of connectors.
 
Trimlock said:
mSATA never took off, which is why you aren't seeing a lot of connectors.
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mSATA took off and was very popular but it is only in nucs and laptops and the like. It was enever used in desktops for good reasons....there was no point.

mSATA was in tons of laptops and notebooks.
 
SomeGuy133 said:
mSATA took off and was very popular but it is only in nucs and laptops and the like. It was enever used in desktops for good reasons....there was no point.

mSATA was in tons of laptops and notebooks.
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Well, there was like maybe 2 generations of laptops and stuff that had mSATA, I wouldn't really say it took off. It would have been better if it was even LESS popular, and everyone went straight to M.2 -- even if they were using it only in SATA form.
 
extide said:
Well, there was like maybe 2 generations of laptops and stuff that had mSATA, I wouldn't really say it took off. It would have been better if it was even LESS popular, and everyone went straight to M.2 -- even if they were using it only in SATA form.
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you do realize the standard came out when SATA 3.0 came out right? It was in more then 2 gens

This epicness came with mSATA SSD

SKL->BW->HW->IB->SB->Arrandale

6 gens ago...at least

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-Asus-Eee-Slate-EP121-Tablet-MID.50888.0.html

see tear down (looks like mSATA to me. Yea read through the page and its the sandisk P4 which is a mSATA drive.
http://forum.tabletpcreview.com/threads/a-look-inside-the-ep121.38468/
 
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Sure it was in a few machines back then but it was only REALLY COMMON in the IB/HW gens, and maybe some SB it was popular in.
 
extide said:
Sure it was in a few machines back then but it was only REALLY COMMON in the IB/HW gens, and maybe some SB it was popular in.
Click to expand...

so it became popular 5 gens ago and popular in 3ish gens...and? It was meant only for mobile/ SFF. Surre all of us would have loved to have seen m.2 5 years ago but we didn't have it...it would have been nice. There really was no real reason to not make m.2 earlier...just no one bothered, which sucks. It is like display cables...the crap is always a decade behind. DP 1.4 (right number?) should have came out like 5-10 years ago. HDMI is always farther behind. The fact HDMI is always a gen behind DP is terrible. It is just the fact of how these standards work...they are slow as hell with them.

AFIK there is no reason why DP hasn't had more BW. There is no technological gap like process of a CPU. It is just the international bodies that make the standards dont feel we need better cables or standards.

For an example we could have had 240hz or 600hz monitors if cable tech supported it. Monitors have done 600hz since plasma. and 240 for TN/VA. DP 1.4 should have been around years and years ago and HDMI should match DP not be half the speed. I have so amny HDMI cables that are useless because they are too slow.
 
SomeGuy133 said:
For an example we could have had 240hz or 600hz monitors if cable tech supported it. Monitors have done 600hz since plasma. and 240 for TN/VA. DP 1.4 should have been around years and years ago and HDMI should match DP not be half the speed. I have so amny HDMI cables that are useless because they are too slow.
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This is mostly marketing BS on all fronts. For starters "600 hz" plasmas are misleading. They never had display refresh rates like that, it was referring to the sub field drive used by the display, but the marketing department got ahold of the number and plastered it everywhere.

Similarly, the 240 Hz LCD TVs just referred to the internal refresh rate of the display, they couldn't actually handle an input over 60 Hz until recently without weird tricks, but they could do frame interpolation to give a weird smoothing effect.

The limitation has nothing to do with cables, despite what Best Buy would tell you. High-Speed rated HDMI cables have been the norm since at least 2009 and they are enough to handle 4k 60 Hz content. HDMI 2.0 does not refer to the cables, but the devices that use them.
 
Osirus said:
This is mostly marketing BS on all fronts. For starters "600 hz" plasmas are misleading. They never had display refresh rates like that, it was referring to the sub field drive used by the display, but the marketing department got ahold of the number and plastered it everywhere.

Similarly, the 240 Hz LCD TVs just referred to the internal refresh rate of the display, they couldn't actually handle an input over 60 Hz until recently without weird tricks, but they could do frame interpolation to give a weird smoothing effect.

The limitation has nothing to do with cables, despite what Best Buy would tell you. High-Speed rated HDMI cables have been the norm since at least 2009 and they are enough to handle 4k 60 Hz content. HDMI 2.0 does not refer to the cables, but the devices that use them.
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um no.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HDMI

The BW was never there until 2.0 to do 60hz 4K and thats half the speed of DP 1.3 (see edit)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DisplayPort

You can't run HDMI 1.4 at 4K 60hz thats impossible.

Display cables are whoa fully behind displays and plenty of games cna be run at 4K 120 hz ages ago. Just not bleed edge graphics games. So many RTS and FPS and racing games i would love to play at 4K 120hz or higher res/refresh rate. My 980TI can handle a binch of games i love at those res/refresh rates and higher. Star Wars Empire at war would be an awesome game at 8K. It runs at 4K like nothing and its amazing looking to watch space battles at 4K.

http://www.cnet.com/news/what-did-google-pay-the-guy-who-briefly-owned-google-com/

Plasma has the potential to create 600 images per second...they dont because they can't get that kind of data through put. Now i cant find any data on if the screen would appear darker or if there would be any ghosting if you put a single image per pulse (like LCD*) but there is no debating that plasma can support 600hz. Each pixel can refresh 600 times per second just they duplicate the same image 10 times. That doesn't mean they can't support 600 images. The issue is you can't send that much content to a screen because no cable(controller) in the world can do that. A DP 1.3 cable/(controller) can send 480 images at 1080p...well it has the BW to do it. Though the specs don't allow it as far as i know but the BW is there.

*http://www.blurbusters.com/ (page not loading for me so it might be down or one of my AV/AM is glitching) Since this page isn't loading for me i cant find you the exact article but look at the OLED pages and the other pages that talk about ULMB and hz. Plenty of reasons why higher res rates are possible and wanted but cable/(Controller) standards just cant provide the BW needed.


EDIT: well i am mistaken on one part. The cables you are right on. http://www.cnet.com/news/hdmi-2-0-what-you-need-to-know/

Last i read you were going to need new cables so thats cool. Is that the same for DP 1.2 vs 1.3? because I recall having to find specific cables that were labled DP 1.3 to run my screen and having to be under X length otherwise you would drop from 60hz to 30hz on 4K. Last i read or DP it was going to be a new cable did that change as well? Last i read a specific article talking about the cables was about 2-3 years ago so maybe that changed.

Ah found it....you might be able to use the same cables (quality cables is the issue with the new standard)
http://www.anandtech.com/show/8533/...rt-13-standard-50-more-bandwidth-new-features

It looks like things have changed a bit lately in cable tech and cables are being able to be reused if they are high enough quality. Thats good to know that i am mistaken on that and its not like how it used to be. But cable/controller (really the controller) is still way behind. We should have 4K 240hz cables already but don't. Plasma and OLED can easily out put 240+ hz

EDIT: I made some correction with putting (controller) showing my edits since most of the issue is the controller but the cable is a limitings factor now too since the quality had to be really high to support the higher clock and such of the new controllers.

Also my earlier statement still stands that i have a crap ton of cables that no longer work because the cables were made at the minimum quality needed for HBR 1-2 and the same for HDMI. So I still kinda need to get "new" cables :rolleyes:
 
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There are several mSATA to 2.5" trays available as well as a few mSATA USB enclosures out there. Only the older NUC models use mSATA, if you're worried about getting an mSATA drive just get a broadwell NUC. Pretty sure the NUC doesn't support PCIe drives, only SATA m.2.

Generationally, you can get an 850 EVO 1tb in mSATA for about the same price as the 2.5" version. I wouldn't worry about performance.

I use a 500gb 840 EVO mSATA drive on my desktop. MSI Z87-gd65, I figured it was worth it to clean up the build a bit and get rid of an extra power and SATA cable.
 
Abhaxus said:
There are several mSATA to 2.5" trays available as well as a few mSATA USB enclosures out there. Only the older NUC models use mSATA, if you're worried about getting an mSATA drive just get a broadwell NUC. Pretty sure the NUC doesn't support PCIe drives, only SATA m.2.

Generationally, you can get an 850 EVO 1tb in mSATA for about the same price as the 2.5" version. I wouldn't worry about performance.

I use a 500gb 840 EVO mSATA drive on my desktop. MSI Z87-gd65, I figured it was worth it to clean up the build a bit and get rid of an extra power and SATA cable.
Click to expand...

is that true Broadwell NUC is m.2 SATA? thats kind of a waste.
 
endlesszeal said:
thanks for the reply guys.

the funny thing is, i tried looking for an mSATA to M2 adapter, but there doesnt seem to be any. however, there are plenty of M2 to mSATA adapters. so now the question is, will there be adapters when mSATA is EOL from every SSD vendor.

im keen on mSATA because i ran into a pretty good deal for a NUC for $190 with haswell i3 4xxxU processor. ive been thinking of buying it to use as a cheap Plex server with a couple of extra hard drives. im currently using an ITX 4790k housed a BitFenix Prodigy, but it's much too big and power hungry for my taste.
Click to expand...

i just bought one msata to m2 adapter
 
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