mini-SATA (mSATA) Standard for Solid State Drives Near Ratification

This news is good news but not quite as good as I had hoped when I read this PC World article title…

Netbook Flash Storage Gets a Standard Connector

Hardware standards are good things. And, the new mSATA (mini-SATA) standard is welcome. But, it seems a bit restrictive with its focus on the smaller (32 to 64GB) Solid State Drives (SSD). On the other hand, its use of the same connector as the Mini PCI Express means a lot less retooling to use with current netbook and notebook designs. So, with luck (and final ratification), we should see mSATA hits the shelves a lot sooner than if SATA-IO had designed a whole new connector interface.

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