Side-by-Side Comparison
SSD
2.5-Inch SATA vs. mSATA
Comparing 2 standards across 5 specifications. 5 key differences identified.
Comparing:
2.5-Inch SATA
mSATA
The 2.5-inch SATA SSD shares its physical footprint (100mm x 70mm) with laptop hard drives, making it a drop-in upgrade. SATA III limits it to a real-world maximum around 550-600 MB/s regardless of how fast the drive's flash memory could otherwise go.
mSATA (Mini-SATA) packed a SATA interface into the same physical card size as Mini PCIe, standardized in 2011 -- but despite sharing its connector and outline with Mini PCIe, it's electrically incompatible, carrying SATA signal lines instead of PCIe lines. M.2 has now largely superseded it.
Specification Comparison Table
5 Parameters| Parameter / Spec | ||
|---|---|---|
|
Standard Base Dimensions
|
100.2 x 69.85mm (7mm or 9.5mm height) | ~30 x 51mm (Mini PCIe card size) |
|
Bus Interface / Protocol
|
SATA III (6 Gbit/s) | SATA |
|
Usable Max Throughput
|
~600 (after protocol overhead) MB/s | — |
|
Standardized
|
— | July 2011 (SATA revision 3.1) |
|
Status
|
— | Largely superseded by M.2 |