Small Package, Big Storage: Samsung’s mSATA 840 EVO Comes in at 1TB

It should strike no one as a surprise that one of the biggest issues regarding solid-state storage is its overall density. Even if you’re willing to part with a fat wad of cash, what you’re going to get in return will feel like a drop in the bucket compared to mechanical storage. As has been proven time and time again, though, that situation is always improving, and thanks to a new landmark by Samsung, there’s proof that this train isn’t slowing down.

With its 840 EVO, Samsung has given the world its first 1TB mSATA offering. Unlike a traditional SATA-based SSD, mSATA is designed for use in notebooks and small form-factor PCs (providing the motherboard has an mSATA slot available).

Despite its small size, Samsung promises desktop-level performance with its 840 EVO. To accomplish this, the drive consists of 4x NAND chips that include 16x 128Gb layers each (16GB per layer). These chips are “10nm class”, so the real process could vary between 10~20nm. With its design, the 840 EVO should deliver 98,000 random read IOPS, 90,000 random write IOPS, 540MB/s sequential read and 520MB/s sequential write.

Of course, there’s no word on pricing, but we’re dealing with a 1TB mSATA SSD here… it’s not going to be cheap.