Which of these is the mSata slot?

Question

Hey this is a latitude E5540 notebook and I wish to insert a mSATA SSD (intel 530) in it. But I'm not sure where is the mSATA slot.

I think its the one next to "ref. to manual" but it looks so small. How could a ssd fit in there?

ps: i didn't buy the ssd yet. Trying to figure out if the notebook supports it first :)

Answer 1

The pins in the first picture, right above the "Ref to Manual" text look like they could be mSata to me. Speaking of "Ref to Manual," did you read the manual to see what it has to say about mSata? :)

According to manualslib.com, your laptop supports mSata if you have a laptop with one of the "other configurations," e.g. without Express I/O and Discrete Graphics. Do you know if you have a dedicated graphics card in your laptop?

Also, it looks like you already have a normal 2.5" HDD in there. You could just get a regular SATA SSD and swap out the old HDD.

Answer 2

That is probably a mSATA slot.

mSATA SSDs are small. Actually, SSDs don't need much space at all - we can cram 128 GB into a MicroSD card, after all (granted, with a lower speed limit).

Here's a comparison of a mSATA and 2.5" SSD (source):

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Now, why do I say probably? The mSATA form factor is identical to that of a full-length mini-PCIe card. The cards should be the same size. The screws are in the same place. The connector is physically identical. You'll notice it looks the same as the connector for your half-length mini-PCIe wireless card. But the signalling is not compatible, and laptops with mini-PCIe slots do exist.

If it's a recent laptop, I'd expect that to be an mSATA slot. You will need to consult your laptop manual (possibly service manual) or contact their support to confirm if that's really an mSATA slot. Or just try and find out (I give no guarantee that testing won't cause damage, though I wouldn't expect it to).

Also note that some laptop models will not boot off a mSATA drive - you can only use it for secondary storage or for caching. Again, you'll have to do research specific to your laptop model to find out if that applies to you.

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You can see from your laptop's manual that it does support mSATA on models that don't have both discrete graphics and ExpressCard. In this particular case, others have shared their experiences and appear to both confirm that and have successfully booted off the mSATA drive.