mSATA SSD, can it be used as a regular drive?

Hey!

I have a little question about mSATA on the Gigabyte Z77-DS3H.
I currently have filled all SATA ports, and I want to add another SSD.
(Crucial m500 SSD 240GB mSATA 3.0)

Can the mSATA be used as a regular drive or is that only for caches?

I know the mSATA is only SATA 3.0GBs, but that is not so much of an issue, as I already have a SATA 6.0GBs and a SATA 3.0GBs drive and the real world speed is pretty much the same.

I currently have a Vertex 3 and a Vertex Turbo SSD, a NEC DVD writer and 2x2TB HDDs, so I was planning to add an 256GB mSATA SSD as my 6th SATA device.
I'm also planning to replace the Vertex Turbo with a 250GB Samsung 840.

My complete specs:
Mac OS: OSX Mountain Lion 10.8.3
Model: MacPro3,1, BootROM MultiBeast.tonymacx86.com, 4 processors, Intel Core i5-2500K, 4.3 GHz, 16 GB, SMC 1.30f3
Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660, PCIe, 2048 MB
Memory Module: BANK 0/ChannelA-DIMM0, 4 GB, DDR3, 1600 MHz, Corsair, CML8GX3M2A1600C9
Memory Module: BANK 1/ChannelA-DIMM1, 4 GB, DDR3, 1600 MHz, Corsair, CML8GX3M2A1600C9
Memory Module: BANK 2/ChannelB-DIMM0, 4 GB, DDR3, 1600 MHz, Corsair, CML8GX3M2A1600C9
Memory Module: BANK 3/ChannelB-DIMM1, 4 GB, DDR3, 1600 MHz, Corsair, CML8GX3M2A1600C9
Network Service: Ethernet, Ethernet, en0
Serial ATA Device: OCZ-VERTEX3, 90,03 GB
Serial ATA Device: OCZ VERTEX-TURBO, 32,02 GB
Serial ATA Device: ST2000DM001-9YN164, 2 TB
Serial ATA Device: WDC WD2002FAEX-007BA0, 2 TB
Serial ATA Device: NEC DVD+/-RW ND-3650A

Yeah- mSATA can be used as a system drive- when inserted, it will take the place of one of the SATA2 ports. I've used the OCZ Nocti mSATA SSD with great success.

tonymacx86 said:

Yeah- mSATA can be used as a system drive- when inserted, it will take the place of one of the SATA2 ports. I've used the OCZ Nocti mSATA SSD with great success.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the info!

As I understand you correctly it will disable one of the other SATA2 ports?
I couldn't find any info about this for this particular mobo, but I've seen other mobos say that you will loose one SATA2,
but there is no mentioning of this in my manual.

cluthz said:

Thanks for the info!

As I understand you correctly it will disable one of the other SATA2 ports?
I couldn't find any info about this for this particular mobo, but I've seen other mobos say that you will loose one SATA2,
but there is no mentioning of this in my manual.

Click to expand...

On some mobos the mSATA port shares a channel with a regular SATA port (i.e. you can use one or the other), but not so with this one, so you should be ok. The chipset supports 2 x SATA3 ports and 4 x SATA2 ports for a total of 6. Since the board only has 2 x SATA3 connectors and 3 x SATA2 connectors, the 4th SATA2 port is used by the mSATA slot.

Does not seem to be a great value per Gig at SATA2 speeds. Best buying options for OCZ Nocti mSATA SSD?

I agree that the mSATA here is a SATA II port and may dissapoint. However with ML we have support for High Point Rocket 640L, a 4 port 6Gb/s SATA PCI-Express 2.0 Host Adapter, AHCI Compliant Pluy and Play, and so on. I have evaluated this card and it works well. I did have to update my BIOS on my Z77X-UP5 TH to ver 12e as the early BIOS that I had would not recognize the card a boot time. While this is a solution that gets you more SATA II or III devices, I did find that the Intel SATA III ports gave me much higher performance when running a RAID 0 pair of SSDs under OS X.

Good hacking,
neil