My motherboard has an mSATA port. Should I use it over an SSD??

peanutismint

peanutismint

peanutismint

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I have a pretty old motherboard (a Gigabyte z77x-d3h) which I just noticed has an mSATA slot. I need to buy a new SSD because the SanDisk one I had totally failed without warning, but I'm just wondering whether an mSATA drive might be better in any way, seeing as I have the port?

From what I've seen, it seems they're only as fast as an SSD but might be harder to set up/swap out than a regular SSD...so if so, what's the point?? Any advantage to getting one of those over an SSD?
 
I wouldn't buy any mSATA drives now. Haven't seen mSATA being used on any new hardware for quite some time. A standard SATA SSD can easily be reused on a new motherboard, whereas an mSATA drive would almost definitely require an adapter.

Maybe if you had an old laptop that has mSATA as its only storage interface, then you'd be forced to use mSATA. Otherwise, can't think of any reason to buy mSATA.
 
I wouldn't grab a mSATA drive for that motherboard, I have the Z77-D3H, so one version back from what you have. And in the manual it states that if you use the mSATA slot, the entire bank of SATA ports (white ones, I believe, so the ones further up on the board where your SATA ports are) are non usable. In short, you're trading supposed less power consumption and "more" space (because you don't have enough) for less ports to use.

In short, it's entirely not worth it. Considering the motherboard is full ATX, you're not going to be short on space and for cooling (and for power for that matter) in the first place. So don't fall into the trap of getting one. You're much better off grabbing standard SSD attached to those SATA ports it'll disable and have them hanging on the side of the case to increase any airflow issues that the case might have had (the only real reason to have gone mSATA over SSD on SATA anyway).
 
Hi - I have a Z77-D3H ver 1.0 and am also looking for an SSD (over the installed Seagate Barracuda 7200RPM 1TB SATA - YES OLD).
I do need 1TB and maybe higher. I only have a budget of £150 to £200, I mainly use the Desktop for gaming.

Am I better off just adding a SSD to boot from with Windows (if that works with this MOBO), or just adding a 1TB SSD (and I will have to back-up elsewhere space consuming content.

Any suggestions of an SSD would be much appreciated, also need guidance in terms of connections. I note my Mobo has SATA and a spare PCIe socket.

Also when I eventually in a year or so get funds to start a new build I would ideally like to salvage the SSD.

Lastly I would like to have an easier life as possible in terms of copying over windows's and software, I understand there are various good cloning tools around.

Many thanks.
 
mSATA doesn't offer any performance benefits over regular SATA unlike NVMe, so the only benefit in desktop systems I can think of is to increase the number of available SATA ports.
 
Howard said:
mSATA doesn't offer any performance benefits over regular SATA unlike NVMe, so the only benefit in desktop systems I can think of is to increase the number of available SATA ports.
Click to expand...

It doesn't even do that in most cases on desktops boards, as they're tied into at least one of the existing SATA ports of the motherboards (like the Z77 D3H in this thread; SATA slot #5). The only reason you'd want to use one, is you were short on space. But lets look at that reaslistically, you're using a normal ATX board, meaning there's going to be enough space to just dangle the SSD's on the SATA cables and you'll be fine. So why even bother pay more (msata costs more than standard SSD per capacity) to use something that gains zero beneift?

Now, in a laptop, I can see the use, but not on a desktop. For this motherboard (Z77 D3H) the mSATA is a trap. Don't go for it unless you're getting the mSATA drive for free.
 
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