Implementation of M.2 within the next 1-2 years? Will mSATA be gone in a few years?

Zeal · April 12, 2013

After reading a few articles about Crucial's new 960GB M500 SSD for only $599 , Crucial also announced that they will be releasing their M500 in other form factors such as mSata, M.2, and the traditional 2.5" form factor. I've never heard about the "M.2" form factor so I did some googling.

Here's an article that benchmarked the M500 to other competing SSDs on the market, such as Samsung's 840 Pro, Neutron GTX, OCZ Vector, Intel 520, Plextor PX, etc. Link

To my surprise, there wasn't much talk about this new design. I found a pretty in-dept article by Virtium that talked about the M.2's form factor, whose former name used to be "Next Generation Form Factor (NGFF)". Have a read Here. (Never knew there was such a thing called "Slim SATA" during the competition of slim form factor SSDs for Ultrabooks. )

As we can see in the diagram below, the M.2 comes in various optional lengths, which in turn can result in longer cards with lower capacity dies (cheaper storage solutions), or even longer cards with higher capacity dies (higher capacity storage solutions than current mSATA cards) for ultrabooks/laptops.

Discuss.

LucasBoy · July 14, 2013

Does anyone have any information on when can we expect NGFF drives to come to stores? I read something about the end of this year, but it was a highly unreliable source. And also some information on the prices won't be useless :P
Personally I think, that there must have been announced NGFF drives and after that - Notebooks with NGFF slots. I see there is no compatibility between mSATA and NGFF and that's a little annoying. There are tons of different mSATA options and not one NGFF.

danthe1man1989 · July 14, 2013

Does anyone have any information on when can we expect NGFF drives to come to stores? I read something about the end of this year, but it was a highly unreliable source. And also some information on the prices won't be useless :P

Personally I think, that there must have been announced NGFF drives and after that - Notebooks with NGFF slots. I see there is no compatibility between mSATA and NGFF and that's a little annoying. There are tons of different mSATA options and not one NGFF.

Jay jay from Asus said it would be out later this year in a tek syndicate video about the Z87 ROG boards which have M.2 options on some of the lineup.