Does my laptop support SATA 3? - TOSHIBA SATELLITE P770

ToshibaSSD

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Apr 7, 2015
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I just purchased and installed my first SSD. It is the Samsung 850 EVO, which is capable of SATA 3 as you all probably know.

In the process of learning everything all at once, and having to successfully complete it without screwing up, I think I have done a pretty good job in getting it all to work.

However, I did not know up until now about the difference between SATA 2 and 3 speeds.

I currently have the SSD in the secondary drive spot, and the original hard drive in the primary hard drive spot. (There is space for 2 drives in total).

What I need to know is, it seems I am only getting SATA 2 speeds, would swapping the drives give me access to SATA 3 speeds?

Or is my laptop only capable of SATA 2 on both drive spots?

I have searched my motherboard specs, but I can't find anything.
(Motherboard: Toshiba PHRAA)

Any help would be greatly appreciated :)
 

skylanepilot

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Apr 9, 2013
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I've never seen a motherboard that has both SATA 2 and SATA 3 ports. Since SATA 3 is backwards compatible, there's no sense to offer both.

I'm not sure if your laptop is 2 or 3, but short of replacing your laptop there is nothing you can do about it. That 850 EVO is about as fast as you'll get in that laptop.

PS - just received my 250gig 850 evo. Can't wait to install it on my new build :)
 

ToshibaSSD

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I actually just swapped the HDD and the SSD, ended up going from 200MB/S to 400MB/S.
I then updated BIOS and it went back down to 300MB/S :'(

Anyone suggest why this happened or how I can fix it?
 

eatmypie

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Sep 12, 2013
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Some of the older x58 motherboards actually had sata 2 and sata 3 because back then everything wasn't done from the chipset on the board, but this isn't relevant for laptops. Just remove the Hard drive and try to test it again. I would also try other benchmarking software because some of them aren't always accurate with the newer SSD's. Also just to be sure try swapping them, some manufactures will set the 2nd port to be IDE and in some laptops they will actually use a 3rd party port as the 2nd one.