msata question

Associate
Joined
17 Jul 2009
Posts
2,167
Location
at home, you?
hey guys, im running a z68ap-d3 gigabyte board, and im already using a 265gb m4, would the msata give me anything performance enhancing? my friend has an 8gb card there he said i can just have, so im wondering what the real world benefits could be.
 
I have only used mSATA on my Z68 shuttle, but I presume things are much the same.
The mSATA slot is SATA2 not 3 so you will not get the fastest SSD speeds and I would point out that the drives vary quite a lot in regards speed, so you need to look up what you have.

On its own an 8GB mSATA drive is not of great use... It will not speed up your M4 in anyway. The best use is to use intel RST to use the 8GB mSATA drive as a cache for a non SSD drive.

I am using a 60GB (which is total overkill size wise) mSATA drive (200mb/s r/w) as a cache for a 1TB sata3 normal hard drive. This has made the 1TB much quicker and quieter.

Summary...
The drive is only really of use if you have or plan to use it as a cache for a normal (non SSD) drive.

Hope this helps.
 
so could i use it to speed up one of my mechanical drives instead of my ssd? i have 2 x 1tb wd green drives that are agonisingly slow
or do the drives theyre speeding up need to have an os on it?
 
Last edited:
just offered it up, turns out this isnt the type of msata card i need, it is too long, ah well, at least it hasnt cost me anything lol
 
@kiel367: How long is it? I've just bought an mSATA card from Hong Kong and it's not recognised by the BIOS. I've no way of testing it as I only have one mSATA aware motherboard and the one mSATA card. I need another "guaranteed working" card to try in the untested motherboard. It's a full height (50mm) card. If your card is the same and you don't need it I would be very grateful for at least a loan of it.
 
Back
Top Bottom