SATA 3Gb/s speed on 6Gb/s port with sanDisk Ultra II 960GB on Z170D mobo

derridada

Commendable
Mar 16, 2016
16
0
1,520
Hi,

Apologies if this is a stupid question, but I'm fairly new to system building.
Anyhow: I have an Asus z170deluxe mobo, with 3 SSDs (2 Sandisk, 1 Samsung), plus an M.2 as boot drive. I have this puzzling interface speed warning on the SanDisk Dashboard, after I updated to the new version (1.4.4.4). "For best performance, connect your SSD to a 6.0 Gb/s capable port," referring to my Ultra II 960GB. It's telling me my connection speed is 3.0Gb/s. This does not make much sense to me. Unless I'm utterly mistaken, all my Sata ports are 6.0.
Any suggestions?
 
Solution
It's possible that a conflict exists because the M.2 socket shares SATA ports with the SATA Express ports and only one SATA device can ordinarily be activated with that configuration. Since that ASUS mb does contain SATA Express capability and (I'm assuming) you've connected the SSD to one of the SATA Express ports there may be a conflict between the M.2 and SATA Express mode configuration in the sense that the BIOS setting for that latter mode is M.2.

Now I hasten to add that I'm not really sure that this is causing the problem in your case because ordinarily when this type of conflict arises one of the devices, i.e., the disk drive or the M.2 device, is not detected in the system. So there may be something else at play here.

In any...
Hey there, @derridada!

What is your Windows OS version? I'd suggest you check your BIOS settings and make sure that the SATA mode for the SSDs is configured in AHCI. Another thing you should do is check if you have the latest SATA controller & Chipset drivers installed from your motherboard manufacturer's official website. While on it, I'd suggest you also check your BIOS version. Have you tried running any SSD benchmark utility to see what is your transfer rate speed currently?
It might also be a good idea to swap the SATA cable itself and the SATA port, and check if using a different one will get the SSD properly recognized ina SATA III Port.

Keep me posted with the troubleshooting & good luck! :)
SuperSoph_WD
 
It's possible that a conflict exists because the M.2 socket shares SATA ports with the SATA Express ports and only one SATA device can ordinarily be activated with that configuration. Since that ASUS mb does contain SATA Express capability and (I'm assuming) you've connected the SSD to one of the SATA Express ports there may be a conflict between the M.2 and SATA Express mode configuration in the sense that the BIOS setting for that latter mode is M.2.

Now I hasten to add that I'm not really sure that this is causing the problem in your case because ordinarily when this type of conflict arises one of the devices, i.e., the disk drive or the M.2 device, is not detected in the system. So there may be something else at play here.

In any event, just as a test (again assuming you've connected a SSD to the SATA Express port), move that drive to one of the other vacant SATA ports and see if that corrects the problem.
 
Solution

derridada

Commendable
Mar 16, 2016
16
0
1,520
Hi,
apologies for the late reply. Thank you both very much for your suggestions!! I truly appreciate it.

The solution proved simple, yet I've no idea exactly why it worked. On a whim, just as I was about to open the PC and switch the disk to a different SATA port, I uninstalled Intel Rapid Storage Technology (came with the Asus mobo driver suite) and upon restart the SanDisk Dashboard indicated the disk in question was running at normal speeds again. I noticed the Sandisk SSD was showing in RST, but not my other SSDs - strange (I have 2 traditional HDDs for backup and media installed as well). I guess Samsung Magician works better than SanDisk Dashboard?

Anyhow, thanks again. By the way: Does Intel RST actually do anything useful when not having a RAID setup?