What happens when SATA 2.0 is saturated?

wmsjb

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Aug 12, 2011
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Hello All,

Excuse me for asking what I suspect is a dumb question, but I'm stuck with SATA 2.0 on my 1st generation iMac 27" and want to add a SSD in place of the optical drive. Should I buy a SSD with SATA 3.0 even though it will saturate the SATA 2.0 system or would purchasing a SSD with SATA 2.0 be more advisable. Is SATA 3.0 backwards compatible with SATA 2.0? There is no price difference on the OWC drives I'm looking at.
 
Solution
Yes, SATA 3.0 is backwards compatible with SATA 2.0, so the SATA 3.0 SSD will work, but at the maximum speeds of SATA 2.0.

Buy the SATA 3.0 SSD so you will be set whenever you decide to upgrade your system.