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• mayankleoboy1 - Monday, January 28, 2013 - link

  lolled at "iSandforce" :D

• SleepyFE - Monday, January 28, 2013 - link

  Did Anandtech get sued yet?
  The i+name_of_device is probably patented by Apple.
  If they can patent square with rounded angles.....
  Just a heads-up.

• netmann - Monday, January 28, 2013 - link

  Maybe Apple bought Sandforce! :-)

• RU482 - Monday, January 28, 2013 - link

  30GB specifically only has 3yr warranty, the rest have 5 yrs
  
  Also, from the slides I've seen, the M.2/NGFF drives coming later will be the 22mm x 80mm long variety (by comparison, mSATA is 30mm x 50.95mm). the 22mm x 42mm M.2/NGFF will be cache.

• Death666Angel - Monday, January 28, 2013 - link

  I didn't find any mention of mSATA SATA 6Gb/s capabilities. All I found was that it supports SATA 1.5 and 3.0 Gb/s. Does this article and the specs of the Intel drive mean that mSATA _does_ support SATA 6Gb/s? :)

• edlee - Monday, January 28, 2013 - link

  it would be rather impossible to hit anything over 300MB/s on sata 3GB/s, it mist support sata 6GB/s

• Death666Angel - Monday, January 28, 2013 - link

  You don't say.
  The problem is, that even the official press release for mSATA from SATA IO only states up to 3.0 speeds and I could not find anything official that says otherwise, except from mSATA manufacturers.
  I guess they are just being lazy then and 6.0 is supported without issue. :)

• tuxRoller - Monday, January 28, 2013 - link

  That's the revision number.
  http://www.sata-io.org/technology/6Gbdetails.asp

• RU482 - Monday, January 28, 2013 - link

  Straight off the datasheet Intel provided me:
  
  By combining Intel's high quality 25nm NAND flash memory technology with SATA 6Gb/s interface support, the Intel SSD 525 Series delivers sequential read speeds of up to 550 MB/s and sequential write speeds of up to 520 MB/s.

• netmann - Monday, January 28, 2013 - link

  Can some one confirm that TRIM is supported with these mSATA SSDs in RAID? Thanks

• ViRGE - Monday, January 28, 2013 - link

  Is there even a chassis that offers dual mSATA for RAID use?

• critical_ - Monday, January 28, 2013 - link

  I've been waiting for these. I will finally get rid of the crap ADATA SX300 256GB mSATA in my possession. HELLO EBAY!

• kmmatney - Monday, January 28, 2013 - link

  The Adata mSATA you have is also using Sandforce (and got great reviews) - I doubt you'll see any difference at all.

• critical_ - Tuesday, January 29, 2013 - link

  Firmware support. Firmware support. Firmware support.
  
  ADATA hasn't released 5.0.4+ yet. We're still stuck on 5.0.2a months after the new firmware was released. I'll pay Intel for their great support and quicker-than-molasses firmware validation. So, yes, I'll see a difference once I have working TRIM.

• JeBarr - Monday, January 28, 2013 - link

  The more mSATA, the merrier. Not many choices out there for consumer mSATA so having another version from Intel will be good for everyone. Especially since they are covering all sizes except for the extra large 480/512GB.
  
  One question about the M.2 form factor
  
  Does the PCIe interface compatibility mean I can convert via cable to PCIe x1 slot?

• JeBarr - Tuesday, January 29, 2013 - link

  Disregard that question.....just read the bit on NGFF...which i shoulda done in the first place :D

• ZoSo - Tuesday, January 29, 2013 - link

  Guess this will be nice for OEM. I'll be building an HTPC very soon and have been looking for a Mini ITX board that will support a 6GB mSATA. But all the ones I've seen so far only support 3GB mSATA.

• hrrmph - Wednesday, January 30, 2013 - link

  TOOLBOX
  
  Good to see you guys (Anand and Kristian) covering the toolbox software in more detail lately. Thanks!
  
  I recently tried the Samsung Magician toolbox software with WinXP and found it to be buggy and irritating to work with (doesn't recognize 840 Pro, insists on running at Windows startup, etc.). I've got a new Win7 machine, so I'll give it a try with that machine.
  
  The screenshots of the Intel software appear to show that their toolbox has some polish to it. I look forward to trying it.
  
  ------------------
  
  MUSIC & MOVIES
  
  I'm currently running SSDs for system drives (OS + progs + a small amount of mostly compressible data) on all of my machines. The SSDs are OWC, Intel, and Samsung.
  
  It looks like larger and larger SSDs for bulk data are on the cusp of being affordable. So I am itching to buy some bigger capacity SSDs to dedicate to bulk storage.
  
  So I also particularly appreciate the reminder that Sandforce drives perform very poorly when they get filled up with compressed data like movies and music.
  
  ------------------
  
  WARRANTY
  
  Good to see Intel giving a proper 5 year warranty.
  
  Unfortunately, it looks like the high capacity drives from some of the competition are stuck with paltry 3-year warranties.
  
  -------------------------
  
  LAST THOUGHTS
  
  So it looks like good toolbox software, a decent warranty, and high capacity (~960GB), in a high performance SSD aren't quite here yet.
  
  But, for system drives in mSATA slots, these Intel 525 SSDs look to be unbeatable.
  
  Thanks for great SSD articles! I look forward to reading the updates on spare area.
  
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