The Mini-SATA or mSATA form factor and interface standard for SSDs has been around since September, 2009 and it now seems to be gaining substantial traction in the form of several new product introductions over the last couple of months. The product introduction that triggered this blog entry is the announcement this month by Unigen that rolled out three mSATA SSDs: Models 2202 and 2204 for applications that require high-performance random access and the Model 2512 that is more targeted to applications involving “incompressible” data such as the storage of pre-compressed video, image, and audio files. All drives employ a SATA III interface that operates at 6Gbits/sec and ship next month.
Here’s a photo of a Unigen mSATA drive:
Many comments to be found in online credit Lenovo for helping to make the mSATA form factor suddenly popular. For example, here’s one such credit from thessdreview.com site:
“For the most part, we have Lenovo to thank for that as millions of Thinkpad owners played a key role in mSATA SSDs flying off the shelves quicker than they could restock. Industry has responded well, however, as mSATA becomes the new ‘SSD Du Jours’ for the new ultra crowd.”
Other mSATA drives announced within the last month or two include:
Denali Memory Report 