mSATA slot in laptop?

[gkristanec4]

Is this an mSATA slot? Could I install an SSD in it, and if yes, which one?

[Naeaes]

No, that's mPCIe. There are SSDs for that too but since it's most often used for Wi-Fi, there's usually very little room. An mPCIe SSD is often too long. 

[SydneySideSteveSomewheres]

Here is someone else asking the same question -click here-, interestingly the forum post offers a good solution to expanding storage by way of replacing the optical drive with a HDD / SSD caddy!

 

This is the item that @Naeaes was talking about

[Mark77]

It *could* be a mSATA slot.  Depends upon whether or not the motherboard manufacturer wired it that way, because there's really no way of telling just from a picture.  Many laptops have the miniPCI-E ports configurable for a variety of uses, including miniPCI-E (ie: for WLAN), USB (for WWAN, etc.), mSATA (for storage).  You'll have to tell us what laptop it is in order to receive a definite answer.  You probably should ask your question as well on a forum more specialized to notebooks.

 

 

[Mark77]

11 hours ago, Naeaes said:

No, that's mPCIe. There are SSDs for that too but since it's most often used for Wi-Fi, there's usually very little room. An mPCIe SSD is often too long. 

There are half-height mSATA SSDs, although they're not too common.  You can't tell from that picture how that particular port is wired. 

[SydneySideSteveSomewheres]

11 hours ago, Mark77 said:

It *could* be a mSATA slot.  Depends upon whether or not the motherboard manufacturer wired it that way, because there's really no way of telling just from a picture.  Many laptops have the miniPCI-E ports configurable for a variety of uses, including miniPCI-E (ie: for WLAN), USB (for WWAN, etc.), mSATA (for storage).  You'll have to tell us what laptop it is in order to receive a definite answer.  You probably should ask your question as well on a forum more specialized to notebooks.

 

 

Even if you were to find that the port was compatible with a drive, assuming you can get one as it will not be M.2 SATA. The speed that you can access the drive will be bound to the PCI lane availability, and that being in a laptop most likely has not more than a single lane.

So a shared PCI lane of speeds between PCIe 1.1 = 250MB/s and / or PCIe 2.0 = 500MB/s when the attached HHD which will probably have priority requires, depending on how fast its spinning (5,400 - 7,200 RPM) 75 - 100 MB/s.

 

And that's not even taking into consideration the cost of the new drive.

 

 Buy a SSHD they are cheap enough and will give you the boost of 64 Gb NAND flash something like this 1Tb Seagate STBD1000400 from AUD$120.

[Mark77]

8 hours ago, SydneySideSteveSomewheres said:

Even if you were to find that the port was compatible with a drive, assuming you can get one as it will not be M.2 SATA. The speed that you can access the drive will be bound to the PCI lane availability, and that being in a laptop most likely has not more than a single lane.

So a shared PCI lane of speeds between PCIe 1.1 = 250MB/s and / or PCIe 2.0 = 500MB/s when the attached HHD which will probably have priority requires, depending on how fast its spinning (5,400 - 7,200 RPM) 75 - 100 MB/s.

 

 

 

 

mSATA doesn't depend on PCI-E lanes.  It is connected electrically to the SATA controller on the system board, and thus a mSATA device cannot have performance greater than that of the underlying SATA interface (ie: 600MBps), but conversely, has performance greater than that of a single PCI-E lane as you calculate. 

[SydneySideSteveSomewheres]

12 hours ago, Mark77 said:

mSATA doesn't depend on PCI-E lanes.  It is connected electrically to the SATA controller on the system board, and thus a mSATA device cannot have performance greater than that of the underlying SATA interface (ie: 600MBps), but conversely, has performance greater than that of a single PCI-E lane as you calculate. 

No actually the use of PCI lanes in my reply was to indicate the speed of communication across the signal bus from the CPU. Not the area where you have been discussing which lends itself to inventing things that the OP has not made clear. For all intents and purposes the picture below could reflect the machine the OP is discussing...

 

 

 

...although we could *possibly* assume that the CPU and PCI bridge are integrated.

 

 

 

 

 

The connector the OP has asked about is NOT connected to a SATA controller, it is for a WiFi card NOT storage, the diagram below best examples an outline for the path of system communication.

 

 

 

 

As you can see the SATA is directly attached to the CPU and the WiFi card is connected to the PCI lane the speed indicated as USB 2.0 (this is an example of "Bay Trail" architecture it is unknown if it correctly reflects the OP's system).

[Mark77]

Per your block diagram of "Bay Trail", its entirely possible that the slot depicted can be wired for both PCI-E, mSATA, and USB ("mPCIe/mSATA half size").  Without knowing the detailed specifics of the hardware (ie: laptop) in question, we simply cannot say for sure. 

 

Can you see it in the block diagram?  There's a tri-state mux involved to null either the PCI-E, or the SATA lines, whichever may not be in use on the same physical "miniPCI-E" form factor interface.