SSD / Hard Drive - FZ-M1

Panasonic Toughpad FZ-M1 SSD / Hard Drive Upgrades

Standard hard drives for the Panasonic Toughpad FZ-M1:

Panasonic Toughpad FZ-M1(C) mk1 - 64GB eMMC Flash Memory (Celeron) / 128GB M.2 NGFF 2280 SSD (Core i5)

Panasonic Toughpad FZ-M1(F) mk2 - 256GB M.2 NGFF 2280 SSD

Panasonic Toughpad FZ-M1(J) mk3 - 256GB M.2 NGFF 2280 SSD

Your Panasonic Toughpad FZ-M1 can be upgraded with a solid state drive of virtually any capacity. Hard drives have improved over the years and your Panasonic Toughpad FZ-M1 uses the newer M.2 NGFF 2280 form factor for ultra-fast transfer speeds.

A hard drive is the hardware device that permanently stores and retrieves all of your digital content. Your hard drive stores your operating system, software programs, and personal files. Let’s take a look at the different types of hard drives:

HARD DISK DRIVE (HDD)

A conventional hard drive, also referred to as a Hard Disk Drive (HDD), is an electromagnetic storage device that uses magnetic storage to store and retrieve data using one or more rapidly rotating disks (sometimes referred to as platters) coated with magnetic material. An HDD uses a mechanical arm with a read/write head that floats above the platters to magnetically read and store data on the disk or disks. This is the type of hard drive many of us have known and used for years. Not much has changed except they’ve gotten smaller and hold far more data than they did years ago.

SOLID STATE DRIVE (SSD)

A solid state drive (SSD) is a solid state storage device that uses integrated circuit assemblies (flash memory) to store data persistently. SSDs have no moving parts and use an SSD controller for reading, writing and transferring data. Most SSDs use NAND flash technology which does not require power in order to retain data similar to USB thumb drives or SD memory cards.

TRANSFER SPEEDS

The transfer speeds of a hard drive are determined by several factors. For SSDs, transfer speed is determined by the read/write speed and what type of computer bus interface the hard drive has. The speed of an HDD is determined by the same two factors but also can be influenced by the rotational speed of the disks. in Panasonic Toughpads, rotation speeds are typically either 4200 RPMs, 5400 RPMs or 7200 RPMs. Generally the faster the rotation speed, the faster the hard drive.

WHAT IS SATA?

Prior to the introduction of the SATA computer bus interface, most hard drives used an IDE (PATA) computer bus interface. IDE drives are an older technology and are virtually non-existent and haven’t been used in Panasonic Toughpads in well over ten years. They were connected to your computer or laptop by a wide ribbon cable that usually had forty pins at the connector in laptops.

SATA drives came onto the scene in the year 2000 and because of their ability to move data faster, they quickly became the hard drive of choice by virtually all manufacturers. Transfer speeds are determined by what generation controller your laptop came with. SATA I has a transfer speed of up to 150MBs per second, SATA II has transfer speeds of up to 300MBs per second, and the latest generation SATA III has transfer speeds of up to 600MBs per second. All Panasonic Toughpad FZ-M1’s utilize SATA III controllers.

There are also different SATA interfaces. Along with the familiar seven pin connector, there are also M.2, PCIe, eSATA, mSATA, and others. Panasonic Toughpad FZ-M1’s are only available with the M.2 interface.

READ/WRITE SPEEDS

So if SSDs and HDDs use the same SATA computer bus controllers, how come SSDs are so much faster? The answer is in the read and write speeds. Whereas a typical SATA HDD has read/write speeds of 12MBs per second at the low end and pretty much top out at 120MBs per second max, a typical consumer SSD has read and write speeds of over 500MBs per second, nearly four times faster! And SSD speeds are increasing as technology improves.

HDD VS SSD

The main difference between an HDD and an SSD is the cost of mass storage versus speed. Although the cost of SSDs has fallen over the years, smaller capacity SSDs generally run about twice the cost as an HDD, while on higher capacity drives of say 1, 2 or 4 terabytes, the cost can be substantially higher but like everything tech, prices should continue to fall.

You use your Toughpad every day so why wouldn’t you want a tablet that’s running at its peak performance? Optimize the performance of your tablet by upgrading to the maximum RAM and a larger capacity Solid State Drive (SSD). Learn more about the advantages of optimizing your Toughpad here.

And don’t forget to make your Toughbook mobile friendly with 4G/LTE broadband. Use your Toughbook for what it was made to do! Learn more.