💽 Transcend 64GB MSA370 mSATA Solid State Drive SATA III 6Gb/s (TS64GMSA370) Review

This is not the fastest SSD I could put in my laptop but since I had an empty mSATA slot in my Lenovo and I wanted a separate drive, To run the Linux version for some software testing (I like to keep OSes on separate physical drives when possible), I gave them a try and was very happy with my purchase! A 2.5" SanDisk SSD that I installed in the main drive bay. Nothing like what I got with my main laptop - a 2013 MacBook Air with an even faster PCIe card - but way faster than the old rotating…

My wife's XPS 14 laptop came with a 32GB mSATA drive that was supposed to work with Intel Rapid Storage to cache the spinning 500GB drive, but it was factory and despite Hours of troubleshooting I was never able to get Intel software to speed up a spinning hard drive. Luckily, the price of SSDs has come down enough that it's economical to replace the built-in 32GB drive with this 128GB drive. I junked the 500GB drive and cloned it to a 128GB mSATA, changed the boot order in the BIOS and…

The drive was installed in an 11 year old Thinkpad T41 equipped with a PATA tray for mSATA [vv why did the 11 year old Hibachi DeskStar [DeathStar] drive crash; and it's definitely better than using a SanDisk 64GB micro flash drive to download]. This is 60% cheaper than today's higher performance mSATA drive. With the Caddy, it cost $62 to replace the original, still working, mechanical drive; Easeus DiskCopy works great and is free. However, make sure to disable the Chinese hacking software…

I already have half a dozen of these (64GB in size) and they all work great. I just ordered a few more. My usage assumes a very light write cycle load, so I don't particularly care that the 64GB size has a rather slow write speed than larger blocks. I'm experimenting with them for use in an embedded system based on APU PC Engines platform running on FreeBSD 10.2 with UFS file system.

No problem. Just plug in and boot from a portable DVD drive. Seems fast, but since the machine is a firewall/router, disk speed doesn't seem to matter much. The size is much larger than necessary, probably could have done with a smaller HDD. But the more the merrier, right?

I decided to try the 512GB version after reading a great review on the tech site. The review was right - the 512GB version offers great performance at a very low price. (Smaller drives aren't as fast.) I used it to replace a similar capacity Samsung 840 Evo that had repeated firmware issues. I like Transcend better. Transcend has similar performance but no firmware issues. I also like the fact that it uses MLC flash instead of the TLC flash used in low-end Samsung Evo drives. For those who…

In case any of you are wondering, this drive has high power consumption and initial voltage and will NOT work with Tarkan Akdam mSATA iPod adapter card. At least not for very long. A few hours of use and you'll get a discharge that the iPod battery just can't handle, and you'll have instant disc damage and an iPod that won't boot and has to be reopened. On the other hand, I will put this drive in a USB 3 enclosure and it will be reliable and fast enough to store my photo album in OS X.

I have a Drobo full of regular hard drives. Adding it to a dedicated slot has noticeably reduced the time it takes to fill a directory. According to Drobo's documentation, 32GB is more than enough, but I can't even find an M2 as small as they recommended. Came in a small plastic shell. The white sticker shown in the picture wasn't actually "sticked on" so I removed it and stuck it on the outside of the case for future use. I've heard they get pretty hot with constant use, so I'm not sure if a…