Like others here, am using this to create boot drive for my Lenovo ThinkPad Yoga. Results are excellent, with better speed than I expected from the m.2 format! My primary goal was to dramatically expand storage on the TP Yoga while maintaining speed of operation close to the original configuration. So far, so good!
TP Yoga has both a 2.5inch x7mm high SATA drive connection and the m.2 SATA x42mm long slot. My m.2 slot was empty since my TP Yoga was purchased with an SSD in the 2.5inch slot. SO, all I did was clone the original drive to the Transcend m.2 drive using Acronis 2015 and an external m.2 (NGFF) to SATA adapter (StarTech SAT32M225) plus a USB3 to SATA cable (StarTech USB3S2ESATA), both purchased here on Amazon. Obviously, other connections for cloning are possible, but I used this approach as I had heard that installing the m.2 drive at the same time as the original 2.5 SSD would cause the m.2 drive to be used as a data buffer drive. Cannot verify this from experience, but wanted to avoid the hassle. Cloning completed quickly, then I simply removed the back of the Yoga, installed the Transcend m.2 drive and removed the original SSD. Booted up quickly and successfully to Windows 8.1!
Then replaced the original SSD with a 1TB EVO 840 mSATA as data drive in a mSATA to SATA adapter.
Net result, 1.25TB of storage in this very compact tablet PC! ROCKS!
Speed of the Transcend m.2 256GB drive is very good, though not up to the 840 EVO standards. Boot times seem close to original, and perhaps saving a bit of battery as well, as run times seem to be a bit longer.
Here are the Crystal DiskMark scores for the Transcend m.2 drive and the 840 EVO data drive once placed in the TP Yoga.
Transcend 256GB m.2 as boot drive
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CrystalDiskMark 3.0.3 x64 (C) 2007-2013 hiyohiyo
Crystal Dew World : http://crystalmark.info/
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* MB/s = 1,000,000 byte/s [SATA/300 = 300,000,000 byte/s]
Sequential Read : 489.227 MB/s
Sequential Write : 318.474 MB/s
Random Read 512KB : 293.733 MB/s
Random Write 512KB : 313.945 MB/s
Random Read 4KB (QD=1) : 22.190 MB/s [ 5417.4 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=1) : 44.142 MB/s [ 10776.9 IOPS]
Random Read 4KB (QD=32) : 128.800 MB/s [ 31445.3 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=32) : 281.663 MB/s [ 68765.4 IOPS]
Test : 1000 MB [C: 40.7% (91.6/225.2 GB)] (x5)
Date : 2015/02/28 23:35:27
OS : Windows 8.1 Pro [6.3 Build 9600] (x64)
Samsung EVO 840 mSATA 1TB in SATA slot on TP
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CrystalDiskMark 3.0.3 x64 (C) 2007-2013 hiyohiyo
Crystal Dew World : http://crystalmark.info/
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* MB/s = 1,000,000 byte/s [SATA/300 = 300,000,000 byte/s]
Sequential Read : 490.830 MB/s
Sequential Write : 469.442 MB/s
Random Read 512KB : 409.844 MB/s
Random Write 512KB : 414.553 MB/s
Random Read 4KB (QD=1) : 30.637 MB/s [ 7479.6 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=1) : 45.370 MB/s [ 11076.7 IOPS]
Random Read 4KB (QD=32) : 162.979 MB/s [ 39789.9 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=32) : 362.710 MB/s [ 88552.3 IOPS]
Test : 1000 MB [S: 0.0% (0.2/931.5 GB)] (x5)
Date : 2015/03/01 1:11:57
OS : Windows 8.1 Pro [6.3 Build 9600] (x64)
Net, objective achieved. Transcend 256 GB m.2 drive is recommended based on experience to date.
| Hard Drive | 256 GB Solid State Drive |
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