Will this 2.5 HDD SATA-300 work with this SATA-150?

[Maverick2002]

I have this laptop that I need to upgrade: http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/document.do?sitestyle=lenovo&lndocid=MIGR-62487

Lenovo ThinkPad T60

It currently has this hard drive: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-142-_-Product

Which is a SATA-150 drive.

I'd like to upgrade it to this:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822136692

Will it work? Will it be faster (does the SATA-300 go down to SATA-150 speeds)?

 

[mfenn]

SATA 3Gb/s is backward compatible with SATA 1.5Gb/s. It'll obviously only work at SATA 1.5Gb/s speeds though.

 

[gsaldivar]

I would recommend this instead. The Anandtech review shows significant speed increase over any other comparable drive. There is an integrated 4GB SSD that is self-managed (by the drive) completely transparent to the computer, so works fine with older OS's like XP etc. This drive will breathe new life into that laptop, guaranteed...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-591-_-Product

http://www.anandtech.com/show/3734/seagates-momentus-xt-review-finally-a-good-hybrid-hdd/1

Good luck!

 

[MagnusTheBrewer]

gsaldivar has a good suggestion.
/rant on
I really can't believe how many people misunderstand the SATA specification. Particularly on a tech site. The SATA transfer rate chosen has no effect on hard drive performance, because hard drives are too slow to exceed SATA 1.5 Gbps speeds. So as far as hard drive are concerned 1.5 Gbps vs 3.0 Gpbs tells has no meaning at all. All the people who buy 'SATA-300' drives thinking they are gping to perform faster on their machine than 'SATA-150' drives are idiots.
/rant off

 

[Maverick2002]

gsaldivar - I thought about it, but decided not too after reading a lot of reviews with the drives breaking after only a short period of time. It only has a 54% 5 star rating, way too low for my tastes. The number of bad reviews on page 2-3 onwards is too much for me.

MagnusTheBrewer - I was referring to some older controllers not being able to support SATA-300: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_ATA#SATA_1.5_Gbit.2Fs.2C_SATA_3_Gbit.2Fs_and_SATA_6_Gbit.2Fs

According to the hard drive manufacturer Maxtor, motherboard host controllers using the VIA and SIS chipsets VT8237, VT8237R, VT6420, VT6421L, SIS760, SIS964 found on the ECS 755-A2 manufactured in 2003, do not support SATA 3 Gbit/s drives. Additionally, these host controllers do not support SATA 3 Gbit/s optical disc drives. To address interoperability problems, the largest hard drive manufacturer, Seagate/Maxtor, has added a user-accessible jumper-switch known as the Force 150, to switch between 1.5 Gbit/s and 3 Gbit/s operation.[21] Users with a SATA 1.5 Gbit/s motherboard with one of the listed chipsets should either buy an ordinary SATA 1.5 Gbit/s hard disk, buy a SATA 3 Gbit/s hard disk with the user-accessible jumper, or buy a PCI or PCI-E card to add full SATA 3 Gbit/s capability and compatibility. Western Digital uses a jumper setting called OPT1 Enabled to force 1.5 Gbit/s data transfer speed. OPT1 is used by putting the jumper on pins 5 & 6.

I wanted to make sure the controller on my laptop's board wouldn't be one of these anomalies.

 

[MagnusTheBrewer]

gsaldivar - I thought about it, but decided not too after reading a lot of reviews with the drives breaking after only a short period of time. It only has a 54% 5 star rating, way too low for my tastes. The number of bad reviews on page 2-3 onwards is too much for me.

MagnusTheBrewer - I was referring to some older controllers not being able to support SATA-300: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_ATA#SATA_1.5_Gbit.2Fs.2C_SATA_3_Gbit.2Fs_and_SATA_6_Gbit.2Fs



I wanted to make sure the controller on my laptop's board wouldn't be one of these anomalies.

I'm glad you're doing your homework which makes me surprised that you think the 'reviews' on NewEgg are anything more than people with too much time on their hands.

 

[Maverick2002]

In my experience, Newegg reviews, once they reach a certain amount (over a hundred) are indicative of product quality.

It's just as important as reading reviews on hardware sites. Sure AT could have bought a drive, or 2, or 5 from independent places and thoroughly tested them, but that's still a tiny sample and doesn't account for problems others can run into, failure rates, problems that occur over time, etc.

IMO Newegg reviews are just as important as AT (or other hardware site) reviews.

 

[mfenn]

In my experience, Newegg reviews, once they reach a certain amount (over a hundred) are indicative of product quality.

It's just as important as reading reviews on hardware sites. Sure AT could have bought a drive, or 2, or 5 from independent places and thoroughly tested them, but that's still a tiny sample and doesn't account for problems others can run into, failure rates, problems that occur over time, etc.

IMO Newegg reviews are just as important as AT (or other hardware site) reviews.

IMHO Newegg reviews (or any other self-selecting customer reviews) are worthless for judging failure rates. The problem is that the sample is highly self-selecting. Who's more likely to write a review, the person who spent 4 hours troubleshooting a DOA board or the person whose board just worked?

 

[gsaldivar]

For what its worth, the drive I recommended earlier in this thread (Seagate Momentus XT) has a 5-year warranty.