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I was doing some cleaning of my older Acer Aspire 3860 laptop and noticed that my wireless card looks alot like an mSATA drive. I have not been inside laptops too often (clean, add RAM) but never really had a part stick out at me.

Is this a PCIe slot that I can put anything in or is it a dedicated wifi slot?

There looks to be a deal on a drive and I am wondering if anyone knows that a swap for the wifi is possible?

If I look up Atheros - it is described as a wireless G wifi mini PCIe.

Here is an image of the two cards.

Top card is mSATA, bottom is Wifi. compare

Carl B
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  • Is there any options to use miniPCI mSATA card in place of wifi card? May be with some kind of adapter will helps?! – netanalyzer Jan 24 '14 at 07:50

1 Answers1

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Unfortunately it is not possible!

A quote from Wikipedia:

Mini-SATA, which is distinct from the micro connector, was announced by the Serial ATA International Organization on September 21, 2009. Applications include netbooks and other devices that require a smaller solid-state drive. The connector is similar in appearance to a PCI Express Mini Card interface, and is electrically compatible; however, the data signals (TX±/RX± SATA, PETn0 PETp0 PERn0 PERp0 PCI-express) need connection to the SATA host controller instead of the PCI-express host controller.

Simon
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  • interesting. The revo drives seem to work in a desk top PCIe, but not mSATA in a pci mini? – Carl B Apr 25 '13 at 07:21
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    @CarlB that is because the OCZ RevoDrives have a PCIe and not an mSATA interface. Therefore you can connect those to a PCIe slot but not to an mSATA slot. – Simon Apr 25 '13 at 07:51
  • you are correct, found were someone tried and failed. – Carl B Apr 26 '13 at 15:16