mSATA to full sized adapter speed?

I am looking to buy a Crucial M550 mSATA drive, and fit it to an adapter for full 2.5" size since the mSATA drive is 197 shipped vs 25o for the full sized. People used to argue that full sized SSDs have 8 channels whereas mSATA drives only have 4, but looking at the M550 512GB spec sheet, it says the mSATA version also has 8 channels. I like the idea that mSATA with an adapter has flexability to be used in my Alienware 17 on the mSATA port at SATA III speed, but I'd also like to make sure I'm not taking a performance hit if I use an adapter. Anybody have input on this?

 

Can you give a link to that spec sheet?

Even if the controller has 8 channel capabilities, which I don't doubt it does, that doesn't mean the physical space available on an mSATA form factor will allow all 8 to be used.

I suggest wait and keep looking for a sale on the 2.5" models. The variance in adaptors is not confidence inspiring.

 

Adapters usually take a performance. Not always, but in the ssd realm I would almost bet my batman on it.

 

The adapter don't hurt performance, maybe some latency, probably not. you can find review site review msata drive by put putting them in to a 2.5 adapter.

Not sure how the m550 is laid out, but some small size msata have equivalent performance compare to 2.5 counterpart as they use large capacity nand. There were 2.5 drive with half size pcb etc.

If budget concerns, don't even bother with the m550.

Sent from my 306SH

 

In my experience during the past couple of years the mSATA SSDs perform as well as the 2.5" members of the same family.

Dell ships the E7440 with an mSATA SSD mounted in a 2.5" drive bay using a simple frame they call an "interposer" with no obvious electronics. I've never figured out whether they use the mSATA instead of a 2.5" format to save a little weight or so they only need to stock one type of SSD (the mSATA drive can also go into another slot as a boot drive alongside a 5mm HDD in the 2.5" bay).

John

 

Tiller, the spec sheet is here:
http://www.micron.com/~/media/documents/products/data-sheet/ssd/m550_msata_ssd.pdf

Quoted from the document:
"Micron’s solid state drive (SSD) uses a single-chip controller with a SATA interface on
the system side and 8-channels of Micron NAND Flash internally. Packaged in an HDD
replacement enclosure, the SSD integrates easily in existing storage infrastructures"

 

There is no performance hit for the adapter. It simply changes the pinout from msata to regular sata. It is otherwise identical. Also I don't know anything about channels, but msata hard drives can definitely saturate the sata3 bus.

 

I believe you're misreading it. 8 Channels of nand is not an 8 Channel controller. Big difference.

Seems like it is a two or four channel controller like every other mSATA drive (half or less than normal 2.5" drives) with the nand chips interleaved (similar to RAID0) on each controller channel.

 

Here's my CrystalDiskMark result for the 512GB M550 mSATA.



It does look to be a little slower than the results here but the difference is unlikely to be noticeable in everyday usage.

John