What's an m-sata cache?

[Dashe]

I'm one annoying tech question away from replacing my six-year-old laptop before it dies on me and I'm stuck waiting around!  I'm waffling between two instances of the same laptop, except that one has a 32GB m-sata cache and costs a hundred dollars more than the other, which doesn't.  Currently I am leaning toward the cheaper model, but I would like to know what it is I'm probably not getting and how useful (or useless) it might be. 

I did look it up, but the explanations are full of tech jargon.  I'm gonna need this explained to me like I'm five.    Anyone know what this thing is?

[Chiz]

Well, while this isn't exactly ELI5, you aren't 5 so you should be okay.

First off, a cache in computer terms is a quickly-accessible storage place for "currently active" or "frequently active" information so that it can work with this information faster. If the phone book is a data set, a list stuck to the fridge with 911, your favourite delivery places, your boss' work number, and your dozen friends & family members would be a cache. You still have access to all phone numbers, but you can reference the numbers you really think you'll need often a whole lot quicker.

What seems to be a popular option on laptops nowadays is an MSATA Caching Drive, which is usually a small solid-state drive (or SSD) connected via an MSATA connector/interface to cache frequently accessed files to allow these files to be loaded and worked with faster. These files would likely end up being elements of the main operating system, as well as a handful of programs you run most often. The computer is suppose to manage this caching automatically.

The reason this would be significant is that there are 2 primary forms of hard drive for file storage. There is the traditional mechanical hard disk drive (HDD) that can be slow to read files, especially if the files have become fragmented and the drive must seek (shift the read head across the platters, like the laser in a CD player changing tracks) constantly to reassemble them. The benefit to HDDs is that, since they are an old technology, they are much cheaper per gigabyte, more readily available, and more compatible (although this last one is become less important). --- The second type is the aforementioned SSDs, which are a small collection of chips on a motherboard that can store and retrieve data almost instantaneously and without moving parts (all data on these chips are equally easy to reference at any given time and do not depend on the position of a read head). Problem is, it's a new technology, so it's more expensive. Periodic shortages of chips do not help matters.

So, this 'caching disk' is a trade off. One stores everything on a traditional, 'slow' mechanical HDD, but keeps the stuff most often needed on a small 'fast' SSD.

TL;DR of the above: The option should speed up boot times and software load times by making those files available to the computer faster than they normally would be.

***HOWEVER***

$100 for 32GB of SSD seems like a ripoff. You can get a 'proper', 120GB 2.5" SSD for $120. Of course, if you're talking about a laptop, that means ripping out the HDD that's in there and replacing it with that...and the HDD could be a whole TB...but using a dedicated SSD should offer even faster speeds (on all load/save tasks) than an HDD/SSD hybrid-thing.

[Dashe]

Eh, I'll just go with the cheaper one then.  However slow it may boot this stuff can't possibly be slower than my current machine.  Thanks, Chiz.

[proudone]

I frown upon 1TB, 5400RPM HDs in laptops. My GFs laptop is a few years younger than mine, has more RAM, a better CPU, a newer SATA interface and so forth but still crashes programs more frequently than my old guy with an SSD. We're going to replace her main disk with an SSD soon and see if that helps because I'm pretty convinced that bottlenecking modern hardware like that might lead to resource stalls that crash programs. There's not really another good reason why her stuff should crash more often than mine. My suggestion would be to see if you can't get a Laptop with two drivebays; they usually come with one HD installed (usually a big, slow one) and when you notice the machine stutter or crash a lot move the HD to the second bay and install an SSD. As Chiz said, about 100$ will buy you around 128GB of pure SSD ownage.

[Dashe]

The laptop I got has a 320GB HD on it. About four times what this dinosaur's got now. Not sure about an extra drivebay, or what that would even look like. I'm just stoked I'm going to have working speakers again.

[proudone]

O.o I can appreciate that.