SATA roadmap for laptop drives

[Goi]

Hi,

I'm trying to get a sense of the current and future landscape for laptop SATA drives. AFAIK, currently the standard is 2.5" SATA, along with mSATA and sometimes M.2 drives. It also used to be 1.8" microSATA, but that standard has largely died out.

Does anyone have figures on the different percentages of these standards among various PC laptops (excluding Macs)? Will M.2 drives replace mSATA in the near future like mSATA replaced microSATA?

Thanks!

 

[greenhawk]

M.2 pretty much as replaced the msata in my mind. Looking at new gear and it is M.2 or 2.5" sata drives only.

That being said, M.2 is a mixed bag given it is a interface with multiple configurations. No idea if a particular interface will win out or not.

the 1.8 was a very small period IIRC, mostly cameras and some cheaper end / small devices. I do not think it really hit mass production numbers.

Going forward, the M.2 will be it, especially in smaller devices. But as it is only SSD for most people, it does not have the bulk cheap storage that people still want. So 2.5" will be the go to in normal sized laptops. Especially until SSD's kill off the spinning media market.

 

[Goi]

Thanks! Yup, I've read that M.2 has multiple uses (USB, storage, etc), multiple physical sizes, and multiple protocols (AHCI, NVMe), and NVMe is so new that you can't even boot up from them yet, so it's all quite confusing. Also, NVMe isn't even SATA, right? Are there SATA-NVMe convertors?

With that said, I'm also concerned with the availability of mSATA drives for purchases in the near future, if M.2 drives are ultimately going to replace them. Are mSATA drives all going to reach EOL status in the next 1-2 years?

 

[ShintaiDK]

You can boot from NVME, and no, I dont think there is any converters to SATA.

M.2 covers both SATA and PCIe mode. And IDE/ACHI can be used on SATA, while AHCI and NVME in PCIe mode.

How long mSATA drives exist is a good question. I wouldn't count on many new drives with it. Those that are may still be produced for some time due to warranties etc.