SATA II vs. SATA III

[ManBearPig]

So I had a Crucial M4 in my desktop which had a mobo w/ SATA III, and the speeds were almost spot on with the published capabilities (500MB/s)...if I put the same drive (I don't have it anymore) in my laptop which has SATA II, how much slower would it be?

Thanks!

 

[Old Hippie]

SATAII caps at 300 MB/s.

 

[Coup27]

Random performance won't be affected but sequential performance will max out around 300 MB/s.

 

[RavenSEAL]

SATA3:

 

[General Kenobi]

So I had a Crucial M4 in my desktop which had a mobo w/ SATA III, and the speeds were almost spot on with the published capabilities (500MB/s)...if I put the same drive (I don't have it anymore) in my laptop which has SATA II, how much slower would it be?

Thanks!

Around 200MB/s slower on average.

 

[ManBearPig]

Would that be really noticeable?

 

[General Kenobi]

Yeah, if you move larger files than 300MB at once. Otherwise it's not that bad.

 

[bryanW1995]

I'm still amazed by the speed of my x25m g2, though I'm sure that it would be hard to go "backwards" after being used to 500mb/s.

 

[code65536]

Would that be really noticeable?

Probably not. In the important cases (random access--the reason you even got a SSD in the first place), it won't be noticeable. And there just aren't many use cases (outside of contrived benchmarks) where you'll be doing sequential access of those kinds of speeds with a large enough piece of data to care.

 

[razel]

+1 Above.

300MB and 500MB per second are massive amounts of data. During your daily computing I bet 98% of the time you will NOT use that much data back and forth from your storage PER SECOND. The only time I ever found that speed useful was during an SSD to SSD clone. It transferred 17GB before I got back from the restroom. I'm not sh!ting... really I was only shizzing (#1).

Also keep in mind that being able to transfer 500MB is does not mean the data will get there faster than at 300MB. That is called access time. (latency) Your latency will not nearly double going from SATA III to SATA II. Sequential speed doesn't have a direct 1 to 1 relation to access time.

 

[dryfly]

Will a SATA III SSD perform better than a SATA II SSD on a SATA II interface? Just asking because I only have SATA II capabilities and don't see much sense in buying a SATA II drive.

 

[ccbadd]

I am using a SATA III drive on my machine right now, Abit IP-35Pro. Only has SATA II and it smokes. I don't think most people should even worry about SATA II vs III as the latency is what changes the experience and it is the same regardless of the version of the SATA chips.

 

[ManBearPig]

So you're saying get a SATA III drive even if you only have a SATA II connection?

 

[boochi]

Most laptop SATA II controllers can't come anywhere near 300 MB/sec. 180-240 is the usual range I see.

 

[code65536]

So you're saying get a SATA III drive even if you only have a SATA II connection?

All else being equal I'd be willing to pay a small (emphasis on "small") premium for SATA-III since there's a possibility that I might one day stick that in a newer SATA-III machine. Performance-wise, there shouldn't be much (if any) advantage to using III on II vs. II on II.

Focus on reliability first. Then look at value. Interface speed should not be very high up on the list of priorities.

 

[Old Hippie]

I'm still amazed by the speed of my x25m g2, though I'm sure that it would be hard to go "backwards" after being used to 500mb/s.

You must have some special G2s.

Mine only went @ 250 mb/s.

 

[bryanW1995]

No I meant that it would be hard to go back to 300 if you were used to 500, i wasn't saying that my g2 runs at 500. I think it's listed at 250 read and 100 write, and I'm happy with that.