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Samsung launches 1TB mSATA mini SSD

Samsung is beefing up ultrabook storage space and speed with the first 1TB solid-state drive in the miniature mSATA form factor.

Campbell Simpson
2 min read

Samsung is beefing up ultrabook storage space and speed with the first 1TB solid-state drive (SSD) in the miniature mSATA form factor.

(Credit: Samsung)

Samsung has been taking the SSD market by storm recently, and the trend is continuing not just for high-performance PCs, but also for size-conscious ultrabooks. The Korean company has released the first 1TB mSATA solid-state drive, giving Windows tablets and ultra-thin laptops alike a huge boost in storage capacity.

Tablets and ultrabooks generally suffer from a scarcity of mass storage space because Intel's ultrabook standard specifies a maximum device thickness of no more than 20mm for 13-inch screen sizes and below. A 2.5-inch solid-state drive offers the room for a 1TB hard drive, but many ultrabooks and tablets use the mSATA connector, which measures only 50mm by 30mm and around 4mm thick.

Samsung's new SSD 840 EVO mSATA drive packs its 1TB of flash storage into only four flash memory packages, each with 16 layers of 128Gb memory. Using Samsung's 10-nanometre process, the entire mSATA package is only 3.85mm thick and weighs a mere 8.5 grams — a 12th of the weight of a traditional laptop hard drive.

The new drive isn't any slower than Samsung's other EVO SSDs, either. A review from British site bit-tech shows that the mSATA SSD records roughly the same performance levels as the Samsung 840 EVO, an impressive achievement given the huge reduction in size.

As with other full-size SSDs, 1TB of flash storage doesn't come cheap. We haven't seen Australian pricing for the 1TB 840 EVO yet, but it'll no doubt be higher than the AU$750 street price of its 2.5-inch equivalent. If you want a very fast, very small, large capacity solid-state drive, though, Samsung's 1TB 840 EVO is currently your only choice.