Mushkin Intros "World's First" mSATA 480GB SSD

[exfileme]

This new mSATA SSD will be available next month in the United States for $499.99.

Mushkin Intros "World's First" mSATA 480GB SSD : Read more

 

[thecolorblue]

way too much space!!! ... according to Microsoft

who offers up a grand total of 16gb usable space on its Win RT device (of course advertised at 32gb).

 

[jacobdrj]

I was surprised the MSRP wasn't more, TBH. This is a great option for those lucky few who have mSATA slots in their mobile devices...I only wish that I had an mSATA slot in any of my devices

 

[rebel1280]

mmmm tasty snack for my ITX board!

 

[drwho1]

"At nearly $1 per GB, this mSATA package is nearing what we're seeing from 2.5-inch SSDs."

Correction: "At over $1 per GB, this mSATA package is way more $$$ than we're seeing from 2.5-inch SSDs."

 

[halcyon]

I'm psyched for my Dell XPS 15. This with a Hitachi 1TB 7.2K HDD will really be the kind of storage setup I seek. Nice job Mushkin and thanks for pricing it appropriately.

 

[sliem]

Cool, soon it'll be 5TB SSD.
Why is it not already 5TB SSD?

 

[halcyon]

Next Mushkin or Seagate or whoever should make a nice hybrid drive. Say a 1TB @ 7.2K with a 64MB cache and 16GB SLC Flash. Seems like that would be a hot seller.

 

[CaedenV]

This is the piece that has been missing!
For the last year I have wanted to build a portable NLE setup, and you can fit a really really nice high powered rig in a very small box, but the HDD, and even SSD space requirement always mucks up airflow. But with this you can snap it in a mobo that has msata on the back and it would take literally 0 space away from the rest of the box. If the price ever comes down a bit on this then I would be all over it!

 

[CaedenV]

[citation][nom]sliem[/nom]Cool, soon it'll be 5TB SSD.Why is it not already 5TB SSD?[/citation]
1) nand memory is expensive, especially in high density solutions. at $1/GB a 5TB drive would be $5000. But because super high density memory is even more expensive you would really be talking about $10,000+
2) Controllers do not currently do more than 1/2 TB. If you see a drive bigger than 512GB then they have 2 controllers inside doing some form of RAID to provide the space. Multiply that out to a 5TB drive and you have a very complicated mess with far too many failure points involved. Thankfully 1TB controllers are coming next year, which will open up the door for 1TB mainstream drives, and 2TB specialty drives, but my bet is that it will stay at those storage points a few years before we see 2TB controllers and 4TB drives. So anything larger than 4TB on a consumer SSD will not be seen for probably 5-7 years. However, there will always be things like the OCZ Revo drives which offer much more capacity (I think you can order a 16TB Revo4), but you pay through the nose for such storage capacity.
3) Form factor. Simply put, this device has 1 controller chip, and 4 memory modules, which means that each module is holding 128GB of memory. Considering most chips are 128Gb (bits, not Bytes), we are talking about an 8 fold increase in density over your average memory size. That is also why it costs over $1/GB when mainstream drives are getting closer to 50-75 cents per GB. If you put these chips in a normal sized SSD you would see a capacity of 2TB (16 chips at 128GB each) if someone made a controller that could handle that kind of space.

 

[danwat1234]

[citation][nom]halcyon[/nom]I'm psyched for my Dell XPS 15. This with a Hitachi 1TB 7.2K HDD will really be the kind of storage setup I seek. Nice job Mushkin and thanks for pricing it appropriately.[/citation]
Hitachi doesn't make a Travelstar 7K1000 drive yet

 

[halcyon]

[citation][nom]danwat1234[/nom]Hitachi doesn't make a Travelstar 7K1000 drive yet[/citation]
That's what I thought until I walked into Microcenter and saw one.

Edit: Actually they do. Do a Google on "1tb 7200rpm 2.5 hitachi -deskstar"

 

[Solandri]

[citation][nom]drwho1[/nom]"At nearly $1 per GB, this mSATA package is nearing what we're seeing from 2.5-inch SSDs."
Correction: "At over $1 per GB, this mSATA package is way more $$$ than we're seeing from 2.5-inch SSDs."[/citation]
Only if you're comparing this high-end drive to low- and mid-range 2.5" SSDs. For an apples to apples comparison, the Crucial m4 256GB mSATA SSD frequently goes on sale for $160-$170. That's pretty much the same as what the 2.5" version goes for on sale.

At the 480-512 GB mark, prices are even higher. $499 is pretty close to what a ~500GB 2.5" SSDs cost if they're sporting 560/530 MB/s read/write and 80,000 IOPS. The Vertex 4 is $475, Samsung 830 is $490 (840 Pro hasn't come out in 512GB yet),

 

[halcyon]

[citation][nom]Solandri[/nom]Only if you're comparing this high-end drive to low- and mid-range 2.5" SSDs. For an apples to apples comparison, the Crucial m4 256GB mSATA SSD frequently goes on sale for $160-$170. That's pretty much the same as what the 2.5" version goes for on sale.At the 480-512 GB mark, prices are even higher. $499 is pretty close to what a ~500GB 2.5" SSDs cost if they're sporting 560/530 MB/s read/write and 80,000 IOPS. The Vertex 4 is $475, Samsung 830 is $490 (840 Pro hasn't come out in 512GB yet),[/citation]
Got my 500GB Samsung 840 for $379 at Microcenter. It wasn't a black friday sale. Yeah, the drive may not be the best but the price was attractive enough.

 

[loops]

I got a z68 mobo with a empty msata slot. Seems like it may be time to fill it.

 

[blazorthon]

[citation][nom]thecolorblue[/nom]way too much space!!! ... according to Microsoftwho offers up a grand total of 16gb usable space on its Win RT device (of course advertised at 32gb).[/citation]

There is 32GB of capacity on that MS device. It simply has 16GB of it allocated to the OS, back-ups, and such.

[citation][nom]drwho1[/nom]"At nearly $1 per GB, this mSATA package is nearing what we're seeing from 2.5-inch SSDs."Correction: "At over $1 per GB, this mSATA package is way more $$$ than we're seeing from 2.5-inch SSDs."[/citation]

It's almost exactly $1 per GB. Calling it over is technically correct, but seemingly misleading. Also, it's not that much more expensive than most 2.5" 480/500/512GB SSDs. Considering the much smaller form factor and presumably low power consumption for a SandForce SSD, that extra cost might even be worth it, especially if one is upgrading a laptop that has a spare mSATA slot, but not a spare 2.5" bay. I'm no fan of Sandforce, but that's not too bad.

 

[blazorthon]

[citation][nom]sliem[/nom]Cool, soon it'll be 5TB SSD.Why is it not already 5TB SSD?[/citation]

There are 16TB SSDs if you count some of OCZ's PCIe SSD models.