Will an SATA III SSD work fine in a SATA II computer?

[Kippa]

Will an SATA III SSD work fine in a SATA II computer?

 

[Compman55]

Yes. Perfect.

There are few drives today if any that actually can hit speeds capable of the SATA III speeds.

Most of which can just surpass speeds of SATA I

 

[TemjinGold]

Err... it will work fine yes but you will lose a LOT of speed. I'm not sure where you are getting the "few that can hit SATA III" from. Most top-tier drives are pushing the SATA III limits.

 

[Compman55]

If you are running an intel chipset motherboard and using its SATA III ports, yes by all means. In all other cases no. Real world performance, no.

 

[corkyg]

You didn't say what kind of computer. A desktop can add a SATA III card. A laptop, not so easy. Buying a new laptop everytime a higher SATA level is reached is unrealistic. You will have good results with a SATA III SSD in a SATA II machine. You won't "lose" anything, because you never had it to lose. You will gain much over what you have.

 

[TJCS]

They will run fine.

I have two SATA3 SSDs in two different SATA2 machines and they both have been running smooth. I have a Samsung 830 in a X58 Desktop machine, and a Crucial M4 in a acer laptop that are both performing great with extensive use.

 

[Yellowbeard]

I would avoid it on older Nvidia chipsets. But, Intel and AMD SATA II chipsets do just fine and run close to the SATA2/3Gb limit in many cases.

 

[Zorander]

Running a Crucial M4 on an Intel-based SATAII port with no problem. Speed is damn fast enough for me.

 

[Mir96TA]

Err... ...
... Most top-tier drives are pushing the SATA III limits.

Errrrrr
Only by compression~
Raw Data is still max about SATA II speed
However in his case he will love low latency;
that's where SSD really shine

 

[WhoBeDaPlaya]

No problems
<-- Running 2x SanDisk Extreme 240s on an X58 board.

 

[blastingcap]

You'll be fine even if you lose a little performance in some cases; you still retain the big bonus of SSDs in terms of seek time, no fragmentation worries, etc. If you later upgrade to a SATA-III mobo you will be even more fine.

 

[BFG10K]

SATA is backwards and forwards compatible (like USB), so you can use any SATA drive in any SATA port.

There are few drives today if any that actually can hit speeds capable of the SATA III speeds.

Most of which can just surpass speeds of SATA I

You're talking about HDDs, right? Because SSDs are getting pretty close to saturating SATA3, if they haven't already done so.

Only by compression~
Raw Data is still max about SATA II speed
However in his case he will love low latency;
that's where SSD really shine

I'm not sure what you mean there. Plenty of non-Sandforce drives can exceed 300MB/sec, which is the approximate limit of SATA2. Those controllers don’t use compression.

 

[Shagger]

I am thinking of shoe-horning a SATA III drive into a SATA I computer (Toshiba A215-S4747) just to squeeze another year of use out of it. Then when that's up, I can re-purpose it into another laptop, or make it my boot disk on a desktop machine. It should be backwards compatible right? TIA.

 

[Mir96TA]

SATA is backwards and forwards compatible (like USB), so you can use any SATA drive in any SATA port.

You're talking about HDDs, right? Because SSDs are getting pretty close to saturating SATA3, if they haven't already done so.


I'm not sure what you mean there. Plenty of non-Sandforce drives can exceed 300MB/sec, which is the approximate limit of SATA2. Those controllers don’t use compression.

I really know only few handfull SSD which exceed 300 MB/Sec and it is not achived by compression.
SSD really makes a difference in Latency or Randon Acess Time.
Random Acess time what really makes HDD a slow drive.

 

[pauldun170]

Samsung 830 on a ep45-ud3p + q9550.
Feels good man..

 

[zephyrprime]

If you are running an intel chipset motherboard and using its SATA III ports, yes by all means. In all other cases no. Real world performance, no.

Yeah but, that's MOST of the cases. So many peeps have abandoned AMD that you're probabaly describing 70% of cases where people are installing a SSD.

 

[palladium]

Err... it will work fine yes but you will lose a LOT of speed. I'm not sure where you are getting the "few that can hit SATA III" from. Most top-tier drives are pushing the SATA III limits.

They only push SATA3 limits in sequential r/w (such as transferring huge files around). For most typical workloads with an element of random operations, there would be a penalty, but not huge.

 

[Vinwiesel]

I would avoid it on older Nvidia chipsets. But, Intel and AMD SATA II chipsets do just fine and run close to the SATA2/3Gb limit in many cases.

Not sure what you mean by older, but I have an Agility 3 on an nforce 590 chipset. Is there something I should know? I haven't run any benchmarks but it performs much better than the old HDD.

 

[Yellowbeard]

Not sure what you mean by older, but I have an Agility 3 on an nforce 590 chipset. Is there something I should know? I haven't run any benchmarks but it performs much better than the old HDD.

Some Nvidia chipsets, even from the 7** series have "wierd" issues is all I can say. None of them are fully AHCI compliant. But, as you have noted, an SSD on that chipset is MUCH faster than an HDD on the same board. My statement was mainly meant to let people know that they should not be surprised if they do have an issue. Glad to see you are getting good performance from yours.

 

[Vinwiesel]

Some Nvidia chipsets, even from the 7** series have "wierd" issues is all I can say. None of them are fully AHCI compliant. But, as you have noted, an SSD on that chipset is MUCH faster than an HDD on the same board. My statement was mainly meant to let people know that they should not be surprised if they do have an issue. Glad to see you are getting good performance from yours.

After some investigation and benchmarking I did find I was losing some performance due to the nvidia drivers. Switching to the windows drivers improved my stats but my sequential figures are still somewhat low, as are my 4k qd32 numbers. Specifically, the 4k qd32 read numbers are no better than the regular 4k numbers, which implies that command queuing is disabled? 4k qd32 write speeds are also slow, but as bad as reads. This same drive was getting the full rated speed when installed in my sandy bridge system. Weird behavior confirmed. Good thing this is basically a htpc now.

 

[BFG10K]

I really know only few handfull SSD which exceed 300 MB/Sec and it is not achived by compression.

Eh? Pretty much anything non-Sandforce that's SATA3 will do it. There are heaps of them; Crucial M4, Intel 510, Samsung 830, various Plextor models, etc.

Heck, I'm pretty sure even Sandforce can saturate SATA2 when using incompressible data.