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I have recently bought an MSATA SSD as well as an adapter case that fits into my laptop 2.5" SATA bay.

I have connected it in two configurations: - first through the adapter to the 2.5" SATA slot - then without the adapter to the native MSATA slot

In the second configuration there are no problems: the are no bad blocks, the SMART capability is working, and the read/write performances of the SSD are as advertised.

In the first configuration, badblocks found $1.5^6$ bad blocks, the SMART capability is not detected by the OS (Linux) and the read/write performances are slightly worse on average, but with an incredible scatter. Access times (which should be <0.1 ms normally) hop randomly between 1.6 and 0.1 ms.

My question is whether this behaviour is to be expected from the kind of adapter used, or if the particular item I have is defective.

astabada
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    As long as the adapter does not implement it's own controller then it should be nothing more than a metal-to-metal extension. Your adapter sounds defective but I would be interested to hear other people's thoughts. Can you post the make and model of the adapter please? – MonkeyZeus Oct 31 '14 at 14:29
  • Sounds like the adapter is defective. It should do a 1-on-1 pass-though. Blocking SMART is unforgivable. I really like to know the make and model too. So that I can avoid that particular device in the future... – Tonny Oct 31 '14 at 14:36
  • @Tonny The item was bought on ebay from a Chinese seller. There is no brand on the box, nor on the item itself. I've bought a new one from Startech, I'll post results here. – astabada Nov 01 '14 at 11:16
  • @astabada I'm really interested in the results for that Startech adapter. Especially if will negatively affect read/write performance. We have been thinking about getting them for our own operation. (We need to upgrade 600+ laptops. 2/3 have a mSATA slot, the other 1/3 not. 200 converters + 600 mSATA bought in bulk is a fair bit cheaper than 200 SATA + 400 mSATA, due to bulk-discounts.) – Tonny Nov 01 '14 at 13:21
  • @Tonny Hi, see my answer. Hope it helps :-) – astabada Nov 08 '14 at 09:59

2 Answers2

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I am you and have recently bought two new adapters, one from a Chinese supplier through ebay, and one adapter from Startech. I repeated the tests, with the following results.

On the Chinese adapter, the results were the same as with the previous adapter, in particular: - SMART unavailable - bad blocks detected - worse read/write performance (including worse access time) This strongly supports the idea that there is a design flaw rather than a defect in the two adapters.

The Startech adapter worked as expected: - SMART available - no bad blocks - read/write performance statistically equal to the nominal one.

Therefore there is no reason why these adapters should degrade performance, as MonkeyZeus suggested.

astabada
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@astabada, why bother? The adapter is about $20. I was thinking of doing something on the cheap, but with the adapter, why not just buy a sata ssd? It defeats the purpose for probably most use cases.

Kevin Guerra
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    This is really more of a comment than an answer to what was asked in the question. – fixer1234 May 25 '16 at 03:52
  • I bought the adapter because the mSATA format can fit into other devices I own (e.g. Surface Pro 3). So as soon as I will upgrade the old SDD can go in the SP3. Otherwise a 2.5" standard SATA SSD would do the job nicely. – astabada Jun 03 '16 at 01:22