SATA to mSATA Adapter

Long before M.2 interface became the industry standard for wide range of expansion cards, SATA interface was the de facto standard for storage media. Be it traditional spinning hard drive, SSD drive or even optical disc drive, SATA was and still is quite popular interface. SATA or Serial ATA was introduced almost quarter century back and it is still around on every single computer motherboard.

I had number of mSATA based SSD drives in the past and I still have one in my possession which I discussed in one of my earlier post. Since most modern laptop or desktop computer doesn't have mSATA slot on the motherboard, one way to use them is to get a SATA to mSATA adapter and plug in your drive and connect it to the regular SATA drive as we normally do for traditional 2.5 inch SATA SSD drive.

Although the mSATA and mini PCIe slot looks almost identical, electronically they are very different and cards used on those slots are not interchangeable. This is one crucial fact that I learned in a hard way and took me little time to understand.

In any case, these SATA to mSATA adapters are widely available on various market places but slowly they are phasing out as it is becoming more and more harder to find mSATA based SSD drives. In most cases, these adapters doesn't have any specific brand name so it's kinda hard for me to pin point the name of the manufacturer of my adapter. Nevertheless, they are quite reliable and does not require any software. Your OS should detected them without any major hiccups as long as the SSD drive is functional. For the most of the part it is simply a plug and play adapter.

In most cases these adapters doesn't come with any plastic or metal enclosure like we see on traditional 2.5 inch SATA SSD drive. So, you need to be a bit cautious on how you place them inside your computer case. Just make sure the circuit board doesn't touch any unnecessary metal part of your chassis and you should be good to go.