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Camelot One
MVM
join:2001-11-21
Bloomington, IN

Camelot One

MVM

[hard drive] 256Gb mSATA SSD shows as only 119Gb total

I am trying to re-purpose a 256Gb SSD from an Acer S7. Specifically, this laptop:
»www.amazon.com/gp/produc ··· F8&psc=1
With a Phison 256Gb SSD, model number SSE256GTTCR-S80.
Both the model number on the drive and everything about it when it is inside this S7 says it is a 256Gb drive.

Yet when I put it in this adapter: »www.amazon.com/gp/produc ··· F8&psc=1
It shows as only 119Gb total, even after using diskpart to clean it.

The Acer bios shows the drive controller running in RAID mode, but I am positive this is the only drive. I haven't worked with mSATA drives, is it possible they are using a modified pin set to access it as 2 drives? Alternate drive model numbers used in this model are LiteOn CMT-256L6M and CMT-256L3M, or Kingston SMSR150S3
Camelot One

Camelot One

MVM

Well it looks like it is actually 2 subunits on one PCB. This is going to get complicated........
lawsoncl
join:2008-10-28
Spirit Lake, ID

lawsoncl

Member

said by Camelot One:

Well it looks like it is actually 2 subunits on one PCB. This is going to get complicated........

Not sure what you mean by two subunits?

Camelot One
MVM
join:2001-11-21
Bloomington, IN

Camelot One

MVM

When researching the part number, I found one of the replacement options is the LiteOn CMT-256L3M, which lead me to this:

"Each of the CMT-256L3M's two subunits feature a Marvell 88S9175 controller, which supports SATA 6 Gb/s interface, two 64 GB dual-channel 24 nm toggle NAND flash memory chips by Toshiba, and a Nanya-made DRAM cache chip"

Info on that here:
»www.techpowerup.com/1775 ··· cer.html

Anonymous_
Anonymous
Premium Member
join:2004-06-21
127.0.0.1

1 edit

Anonymous_ to Camelot One

Premium Member

to Camelot One
maybe one of the flash chips are dead?

BlueMist
join:2011-01-24
Cookeville, TN

BlueMist to Camelot One

Member

to Camelot One
said by Camelot One:

The Acer bios shows the drive controller running in RAID mode

Any chance the drive is actually setup as a Raid 0 drive of 119G with each memory module backing up the other?

See if you can get the drive controller out of RAID mode and see what size the drive shows up as.

Camelot One
MVM
join:2001-11-21
Bloomington, IN

1 edit

Camelot One to Anonymous_

MVM

to Anonymous_
said by Anonymous_:

maybe one of the flash chips are dead?

No, it seems this drive was developed this way. It is 2x 128Gb drives on one PCB. (see the link above) It works fine in the Acer laptop it was designed for. (at 256Gb) From what I can tell, it uses the same concept as an external, multi-drive enclosure, where there is 1 esata connector, made possible by way of a port multiplying controller on both ends.

The problem with using this drive in anything else is that most msata ports and msata to sata adapters don't support port multiplying, so they only see 1 of the 2 drives. The adapter I bought certainly doesn't support port multiplying. (or good manufacturing, but that is another issue) I also tried it in a FoxConn system with a native mSATA port, but it too only sees one of the two drives.

A search of google hasn't found anything confirmed to work. I suppose it is possible this might work: »www.newegg.com/Product/P ··· 12186221
But I am not holding my breath.
lawsoncl
join:2008-10-28
Spirit Lake, ID

lawsoncl

Member

From what I understand, msata and sata have the same pinout, so I doubt it's the adapter. It sounds like the drive has a built-in port multiplier which most motherboard sata controllers don't support. Some server motherboards and raid controllers do support it, and you can use an expander cable to hook 1,2, or 4 drives to the same sata port.

»www.sata-io.org/port-multipliers