Sata 6Gb/s HDD at sata 3Gb/s speeds

little_dud

May 31, 2012 4:42:40 PM

Hi,
Would a sata 6Gb/s drive that runs well below the max speed of sata 3Gb/s give the same performance on both or would the 3Gb/s still be worse? what are the factors in this? The hard drives im specifically looking at are the WD caviar black 2TB and the samsung spinpoint F3 1TB, which i believe have very similar performance but the WD is sata 6Gb/s and the samsung is sata 3Gb/s and im using a sata 3Gb/s pc. I would perfer to get the WD hard drive but only if its at the same performance.

More about : sata 6gb hdd sata 3gb speeds

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Dereck47

Storage Expert

May 31, 2012 5:12:19 PM

Hard drives can be SATA 3 "compatible", but not SATA 3 "capable".
A hard drive cannot spin fast enough to achieve SATA 3 speeds.

SATA 3 (6Gb/s) speeds are from 301MB/s to 600MB/s.
SATA 2 (3Gb/s) speeds are from 151MB/s to 300MB/s.
SATA 1 (1.5Gb/s) speeds are from 1MB/s to 150MB/s.

The data transfer rate of the 2TB WD Black is 138MB/s.
The data transfer rate of the 1TB Samsung Spinpoint F3 is 125MB/s.

One of the fastest consumer-level hard drives is the Seagate Barracuda and its data transfer rate is 210MB/s.

Hard drives manufacturers that advertise SATA 3 (6Gb/s) do so for marketing purposes.

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little_dud

May 31, 2012 7:32:58 PM

Thanks for clearing this up for me.

The barracudas seem better value for money with scan so i think i might be going with them!

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JackNaylorPE

May 31, 2012 8:41:52 PM

Yes and no.

Having a SATA III HD doesn't do beans for disk transfers as the spinning platters can't come close to exceeding SATA II speeds. However, with a big fat 64 MB cache, transfers from the cache (Solid State) to the system would be able to take advantage of SATA III.

In the real world, you wont see much difference say when accessing a 3 GB file from the SATA III HD or SATA II HD ..... but in real world usage where frequently used data is in the cache, yes, there will be noticeable performance differences.

Have you considered a hybrid SSD / HD ... the Momentus boots in 17 secs, an SSD in 16

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...

http://benchmarkreviews.com/index.php?option=com_conten...

Quote:

When we switched to real-world tests, such as the Windows boot time, file transfer, and PCMark 7 tests, Seagate FAST Factor firmware and Adaptive Memory Technology really helped Momentus XT shine. In these tests, especially Windows boot time and file transfer, the second-generation Momentus XT SSHD outperformed the PCI-Express hybrid solution and surpassed hard disk performance.....

Seagate has come a long way with the Momentus series, and the benchmarks show a maturity in hybrid technology. Judging by the pace of development, it won't be long before the Momentus XT matches SSD performance in every task - not just what's cached.

I really like where the Seagate Momentus XT series is heading, because I firmly believe all-in-one hybrid storage solutions are the future... at least until NAND flash components can cost as much as mechanical counterparts. Multi-part hybrid solutions with 3rd party software, such as those currently promoted by the competition, are hardly a match for integrated hybrid products like Momentus XT. Now grown to offer 750 Gigabytes of storage capacity, the new second-generation Seagate Momentus XT is offering the best of both worlds better than anyone else.

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