MemoRight MS-701 240GB mSATA Solid State Drive Review

1. Introduction2. MemoRight MS-701 240GB mSATA3. MemoRight MS-701 240GB mSATA (Super High Res Gallery)4. Testing Methodology5. CrystalDiskMark6. ATTO Disk Benchmark7. AS SSD8. PCMark 79. IOMeter10. Real World Testing11. Closing Thoughts12. View All Pages

There is no doubt that the MemoRight MS-701 240GB mSATA Solid State Drive is a staggeringly capable product targeted at the latest raft of motherboards released to market.

The popularity of mSATA drives has been rising and laptops such as the IBM Thinkpad and Dell Precision M6600 have an accessible slot on the motherboard for an mSATA drive. This is ideal for boot duties, while leaving several other positions free for large 2.5 inch mechanical storage drives.

It is worth pointing out that the inclusion of an mSATA slot is not an exclusive feature to the laptop audience. Leading manufacturers such as Gigabyte, Asus and MSI have been including the slot on many of their latest desktop enthusiast boards.

Last week for instance, we reviewed the budget Gigabyte GA-Z77 D3H motherboard, available in the UK for only £80. It had an mSATA slot close to the processor, seen in the image above. Having a boot drive connected directly to the motherboard, without the need for cabling or external space is very useful for specific environments.

The Memoright MS-701 240GB drive doesn't suffer a performance penalty due to the diminutive physical design. It is just as quick as the leading 2.5 inch Sandforce 2281 powered drives and in our testing delivered over 560 MB/s sequential read and 520 MB/s sequential write when dealing with compressible data.

As with all Sandforce powered products, it doesn't fare quite so well with incompressible data demands.

The 2.5inch Solid State sector is literally flooded with Sandforce 2281 powered drives, although they have been recently forced into second place thanks to OCZ's Vertex 4 product, which is powered by the stunning Indilinx Everest 2. This particular controller doesn't suffer any incompressible performance degradation and would be my first choice.

Sadly OCZ haven't released an mSATA Indilinx Everest 2 product, so the Memoright MS-701 240GB we reviewed today is clearly the mSATA market leader. As such it deserves our highest award.

We have no pricing information yet for the MS-701 240GB. We would expect to pay a premium, due to the fledgling mSATA market, high capacity and class leading performance characteristics.

Pros:

• mSATA is now firmly on the map.
• ideal for a boot drive in either a laptop or desktop environment.
• large capacity.
• compressible performance.
• decent IOPS results.

Cons:

• incompressible data suffers a performance penalty.
• Likely to be expensive.

Kitguru says: If you need a high capacity, lightning quick mSATA drive, this is the number one choice right now.

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