Thinkpads Forum

I have a T520. I put a PNY 120gb ssd that I had laying around in the main drive bay and loaded it w/ linux mint 20 xfce.
I intend to put a 250gb msata in the mini pcie slot for additional storage.
There are many different brands, and with wide price variations.
I am looking for opinions from people that have put these in.
Such as brands you have found to be economical and reliable ?
Are there brands with certain controllers that should, or should not be used in that interface ?

Thank you for any information you care to share

mSATA SSDs are ridiculously expensive for their capacity, especially ones from good brands like Samsung or Transcennd. It's cheaper to get a 500GB 2.5" SSD rather than a 256GB mSATA.

Amazon listing for a Samsung 850 EVO 250GB mSATA

Transcend 256GB mSATA

For comparison:
Crucial MX500 500GB 2.5" SATA SSD

axur-delmeria wrote: ↑

Sun Jan 24, 2021 7:19 am

mSATA SSDs are ridiculously expensive for their capacity, especially ones from good brands like Samsung or Transcennd. It's cheaper to get a 500GB 2.5" SSD rather than a 256GB mSATA.

Amazon listing for a Samsung 850 EVO 250GB mSATA

Transcend 256GB mSATA

For comparison:
Crucial MX500 500GB 2.5" SATA SSD

I was wondering more along the lines of this.
https://www.amazon.com/Dogfish-Msata-12 ... xvZ0NsaWNr

A little over a year ago, I was having the exact same dilemma with respect to my T430s. Back then the SATA SSDs were also way cheaper than mSATA for the same capacity, although it was a bit less extreme.

I did decide to go for the mSATA in the end (got a Kingston UV500 240GB), and paid almost the same price as a 480GB-512GB SATA SSD would cost me. The only reason I chose it was for the simplicity of just adding an extra drive versus replacing an existing one (which would require me to clone / reimage the OS). For all other purposes - it would be better to just get a bigger standard 2.5" SSD. Might even consume less power for having one device instead of two.

I know nothing about that Dogfish, except that it's considered a very low-end brand. Sure most of the reviews on Amazon are good, but there are also quite a few reports of drives that are quick to fail, and even one of a virus embedded in the MBR (?!).

Thank you both for the input. Sounds like I may just be better off Pulling the 120gb out and putting in a larger 2.5 ssd, and saving the 120gb for a different project.