- Iftekhar Bhuiyan
- Nov 20, 2025
- Views: 65
- Comment: 0
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One thing I know for sure is that M.2 based SATA drive consumes less power and generates less heat compared to the NVMe drive. This is an important factor for laptop computers as less power and heat means longer battery life in general. I am also well aware of the fact that NVMe drives are way faster than any SATA based drive that I can think of.
However, for desktop computers though things are a bit different. Here speed is much more important than any other factors while talking about internal storage. Still, I prioritized battery life over blazing speed for my Dell laptop. So when I found this cheap SATA drive online, I did not hesitate to place the order couple of years back. I do not use my laptop everyday and it is not being used to perform any serious task either. Here is the basic specification of this particular drive.
| General Specification | |
|---|---|
| Brand | Micron |
| Model | 1300 (MTFDDAV512TDL) |
| Capacity | 512 GB |
| Firmware | M5MU000 |
| Interface | Serial ATA |
| Transfer Mode | SATA-150, SATA-600 |
| Standard | ACS-4 Revision 5 |
| Features | S.M.A.R.T., NCQ, TRIM, DevSleep, GPL |
| Dimension | 22 x 80 mm |
Generally speaking, I do not think I need half a terabyte size drive for my laptop as I won't be installing whole lot of application on that anyway. Then again, I did not mind having a big drive with multiple partition just in case if I change my mind to try out other operating systems as well. In any case, extra space is always welcome regardless.
I made two different partition on this drive. A big chunk of the drive went for Windows installation and kept only about 100 GB for another partition to keep some of my files. Over the years, this setup served me really well until I decided to upgrade the operating system to Windows 11. Let's just say that did not go well with my laptop because of poor specification. Here is the WinSAT drive test result in case if you are curious to know.
| WinSAT Result | |
|---|---|
| Random 16.0 Read | 449.08 MB/s |
| Sequential 64.0 Read | 506.05 MB/s |
| Sequential 64.0 Write | 488.95 MB/s |
| Average Read Time with Sequential Writes | 0.281 ms |
| Latency 95th Percentile | 0.537 ms |
| Latency Maximum | 4.346 ms |
| Average Read Time with Random Writes | 0.275 ms |
The test result is not impressive and I think one should not be expecting any better from such drive. It is fairly old piece of hardware and no one should be using it now a days on their daily driver. However, if you are planning to re-use or to revive your old computer that only supports SATA based M.2 drive, you can definitely give it a shot if the price is right for you. Also, make sure to update the firmware if possible to get the most out of these old devices.
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