At the bottom of that Crucial page I linked last week are SSDs recommended by Crucial for this model, and I recommend those too for the same reasons. If you have a USB drive dock or a USB-SATA cable, you can easily clone the drive this laptop comes with to the SSD. Here’s the Crucial link, but please look at my comment from last week too:
Aside: I have tried Samsung SSDs and I have had nothing but trouble with them and there is NO SUPPORT from Samsung - NOTHING, no telephone, no email, no forum. Crucial has a forum, 800 number, and email. But I have never had a problem with Crucial SSDs. I have not tried other brand SSDs. I probably never will unless I am forced to.
(If I am sounding like an ad for Crucial, I am not and I have no connection to them, I am just a completely satisfied customer over many years. My laptop I am using right now has Crucial RAM and a Crucial SSD.)
Does anyone know if I can use an mSATA SSD in these? (I accidentally bought the SSD several months ago for a desktop, not realizing it was mSATA, so it’s just sitting here.)
Unfortunately, no, it will not work directly. It might even seem like it physically fits and connects, but it won’t be connecting to the SATA controller in this machine. (In certain other laptops it would fit, connect, and work. This Dell model simply wasn’t designed for it.)
Newegg sells this “mSATA to SATA” adapter card, for $12, which supposedly will take the mSATA drive and adapt it to fit the regular 2.5" SATA hard drive bay in this or other laptops, or connect to the SATA in your desktop, loosely and unmounted unless you hack something up to mount it in the desktop. I have NO experience with this but reviews there indicate it works. If it is properly designed it should work. 12 bucks, maybe worth a try?
Thanks ojohn! I forgot to come back and check this before we went out for the evening, and they’re sold out now. I bookmarked it for the next time these or similar Latitudes pop up, though. I was “upset” I missed the $250 one a week or two ago, so hopefully they’ll come up again soon, as we need a couple new laptops! I will go check that out on NewEgg now.