# Is SATA II sufficient for HDD's?



## 80251 (May 9, 2021)

Would a SATA III external eSATA or USB 3.0 enclosure make any noticeable difference in performance over a SATA II external eSATA or USB 2.0 enclosure for HDD's?


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## FreedomEclipse (May 10, 2021)

Yup. USB 2.0 transfer rate only goes to between 25-35mb/s. USB 3.0 would see around 90-135mb/s but its all dependant on the drive you use. Mechanical HDDs can only go so fast.

You would still get a decent transfer rate if you used a Sata II hard drive on a USB 3.0 dock. Even Sata III hard drives only transfer at a max rate of 150-180mb/s -- and some will do 190-200mb/s if youre super lucky and throw money on a WD Black drive but either way, thats a big ask for a mechanical hard drive.

SSDs will be a lot lot faster over USB 3.0


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## Hachi_Roku256563 (May 10, 2021)

Most hds go above 50mb/s (depending on the drive) so it will def be noticeable some of the best can get to 150/mb


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## elghinnarisa (May 10, 2021)

I feel like both of you might want to update your mechanical harddrive performance listings. Modern spinners can go quite a bit faster than what you think. My two recent purchases had no issues sitting at 230MB/s for a couple of hours before they started making their way inwards on the platters. 

SATA II is however more than enough to saturate a mechanical drive, USB 2.0 however would without a doubt be a bottleneck for it.
How much difference it would make in reality however, depends on how you use your external storage. If you are constantly moving large files back and forth then it could very well make a difference.


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## Hachi_Roku256563 (May 10, 2021)

elghinnarisa said:


> I feel like both of you might want to update your mechanical harddrive performance listings. Modern spinners can go quite a bit faster than what you think. My two recent purchases had no issues sitting at 230MB/s for a couple of hours before they started making their way inwards on the platters.
> 
> SATA II is however more than enough to saturate a mechanical drive, USB 2.0 however would without a doubt be a bottleneck for it.
> How much difference it would make in reality however, depends on how you use your external storage. If you are constantly moving large files back and forth then it could very well make a difference.


idk what that drive is but my wd purple 4tb manages 150mb and its the fastest hdd in my system


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## elghinnarisa (May 10, 2021)

Isaac` said:


> idk what that drive is but my wd purple 4tb manages 150mb and its the fastest hdd in my system


Just a pair of cheapest of the day Seagate Ironwolf 4TB's.


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## Rhein7 (May 10, 2021)

I think others already said it but I have 2 USB enclosures right in front of me right now.
A generic chinese brand USB 2.0 enclosure and Orico USB 3.0 with 2 TB WD Green in it. Just for the lulz I tried the WD Green in USB 2.0 enclosure and it only manages 20-25 MB/s compared to 70-90 MB/s on Orico.

Even if it's just to save some money, better go with USB 3.0 tbh.


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## Solid State Soul ( SSS ) (May 10, 2021)

Yes, only SSDs utilize past sata2 speeds


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## Jetster (May 10, 2021)

Yes,  SATA III is faster than UDB 3.0, SATA II and USB 2.0


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## Mussels (May 10, 2021)

I'll back others here, SATA II is enough for mechanical drives, but USB 2.0 is not

Any USB 3.0 enclosure will do the trick


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## FreedomEclipse (May 10, 2021)

elghinnarisa said:


> I feel like both of you might want to update your mechanical harddrive performance listings. Modern spinners can go quite a bit faster than what you think. My two recent purchases had no issues sitting at 230MB/s for a couple of hours before they started making their way inwards on the platters.



No i dont. Because no mechanical hard drive is ever going to hit 230mb/s on USB 3.0 (which is what the OP is asking about)


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## Mussels (May 10, 2021)

FreedomEclipse said:


> No i dont. Because no mechanical hard drive is ever going to hit 230mb/s on USB 3.0


Uhhh... why not? I've got an Msata SSD here on USB3 that does 500MB/s with no issues

why cant a modern mech drive achieve that on the same USB controller?


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## FreedomEclipse (May 10, 2021)

Mussels said:


> Uhhh... why not? I've got an Msata SSD here on USB3 that does 500MB/s with no issues
> 
> why cant a modern mech drive achieve that on the same USB controller?



Because its not mechanical. and mechanical drives can only go so fast??? Ive never seen one hit those speeds in an external dock or enclosure. (Prove me wrong??)


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## Mussels (May 10, 2021)

FreedomEclipse said:


> Because its not mechanical. and mechanical drives can only go so fast??? Ive never seen one hit those speeds in an external dock or enclosure.


But... they can.
USB 3.0 can do it
the mech drives can do it

Combined... they can still do it.

Modern mech drives can break 200MB/s


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## FreedomEclipse (May 10, 2021)

Well, Like i said. Ive never seen a mechanical drive break 200mb/s in an external enclosure. (so agree to disagree on my part)


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## Jetster (May 10, 2021)

FreedomEclipse said:


> Well, Like i said. Ive never seen a mechanical drive break 200mb/s in an external enclosure. (so agree to disagree on my part)


I hadn't ether until recently, but not by much. It was a WD Elements 14 Tb USb 3.0


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## MIRTAZAPINE (May 10, 2021)

FreedomEclipse said:


> Well, Like i said. Ive never seen a mechanical drive break 200mb/s in an external enclosure. (so agree to disagree on my part)



Actually mechanical HDD do hit pass 200MB/s.

Here is the fastest mechanical drive I have breaking 277MB/s on my orico usb 3.0 dock, yeah its an outlier it an enterprise ultrastar hc550 18TB at 7200rpm. HDD infact passed 200MB/s even on usb 3.0 enlclosure. My WD elements top out at around 210MB/s for its 5400rpm drive.

Edit : With a decent well implemented UASP usb 3.0 encloursure you get less speed penalty over usb 3.0 for hdd transfer. I still agree that most hdd is more than sufficient even on a non uasp usb 3.0 enclosure is sufficient.


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## 80251 (May 10, 2021)

That enterprise ultrastar hc550 18TB is impressive for a spinner. Is it Hitachi? How much did it cost? I seem to remember back when I worked in a datacenter there were 10,000 and 15,000 RPM HDD's, were those capable of that kind of performance?


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## QuietBob (May 10, 2021)

80251 said:


> I seem to remember back when I worked in a datacenter there were 10,000 and 15,000 RPM HDD's, were those capable of that kind of performance?


Very unlikely. This is the last WD Velociraptor from 2012, probably the fastest 10,000 rpm consumer drive there was:


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## Mussels (May 10, 2021)

the high RPM drives had faster response times, not higher throughput


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## elghinnarisa (May 11, 2021)

FreedomEclipse said:


> No i dont. Because no mechanical hard drive is ever going to hit 230mb/s on USB 3.0 (which is what the OP is asking about)


Yes, you do. I ran both my drives through a surface test before using them in my system, which I did using a usb 3.0 dock which holds two drives, both drives were going quite a bit past 200MB/s each in that dock until they reached the inner parts of the platters and they slowly dropped down to sub 150MB/s.


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## evernessince (May 11, 2021)

MIRTAZAPINE said:


> Actually mechanical HDD do hit pass 200MB/s.
> 
> Here is the fastest mechanical drive I have breaking 277MB/s on my orico usb 3.0 dock, yeah its an outlier it an enterprise ultrastar hc550 18TB at 7200rpm. HDD infact passed 200MB/s even on usb 3.0 enlclosure. My WD elements top out at around 210MB/s for its 5400rpm drive.
> 
> ...



Yep.  I have some 16TB WD Golds that do 255MB/s


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## MIRTAZAPINE (May 11, 2021)

80251 said:


> That enterprise ultrastar hc550 18TB is impressive for a spinner. Is it Hitachi? How much did it cost? I seem to remember back when I worked in a datacenter there were 10,000 and 15,000 RPM HDD's, were those capable of that kind of performance?



Yes it a Hitachi HGST drive but its owned under WD now. I was lucky to get this drive for around $440usd it usually cost way more. This is before its depleted by HDD crypto mining. This is my 2nd enterprise hdd after a Toshiba MG07 14TB which also runs about the same speed but much louder. 

I don't own a high speed rpm hdd, I guess Quietbob have answered you that with the velociraptor. HDD speed grow slowly over the years due to density increases but the speed have remain static at around 280MB/s at the most for the past 4 years.  Manufacturer could no longer increase hdd density with perpendicular recording technology which how speed and space have been increasing since 2005 when the tech came out.  It was a rather simple change from the prior Longitudinal recording. There tech to increase density like shingle recording which is what wd and seagate did to lower space hdd to decrease cost. Shingle recording unfortunately make hdd slower and its terrible for random writes especially.


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## Superzuber (May 17, 2021)

There are USB 3.1 Gen 2, 10Gb/s enclosures available, doing constant 520MB/s in software RAID0 with two WD Ultrastar 14TB - enclosure is for 2x 3,5" drives

edit: it's more like dock than enclosure - EVOLVEO DION 2, 10Gb/s


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## Mussels (May 22, 2021)

Somehow the world's fastest hard drive can now rival SSD speeds | PC Gamer

New 14TB drive advertised by seagate as 525MB/s


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## Panther_Seraphin (May 22, 2021)

Mussels said:


> Somehow the world's fastest hard drive can now rival SSD speeds | PC Gamer
> 
> New 14TB drive advertised by seagate as 525MB/s


That however is purely an enterprise drive at the moment and I can imagine that when it gets to consumers it will have a cool 20%+ extra in terms of cost. 

It is interesting to see how HDDs will stay relevant for the near future, especially if they can get to say 4 actuators per drive (Imagine up to 1Gbps throughput on a spinner)


Regarding the USB thing. Depends on the number of drives. 1 Drive or 2 sure USB will be fine in most use cases for spinning rust, get beyond that however and you will probably hit a bottleneck with the controller vs the actual drives.


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## Shrek (May 22, 2021)

Very clever how they finally start moving heads independently.


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## Superzuber (May 24, 2021)

It seems that each head is limited to dedicated plotters > means performance gains could be limited in specific scenarios and eventually there will be bigger chance to lose data (if heads write each to different plotters it would work like raid0 internally)?
I was hoping for 2+ independent heads where both can access all plotters.


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## lexluthermiester (May 24, 2021)

80251 said:


> Is SATA II sufficient for HDD's?


Answering your original question, yes. SATA2 is a 3Gbps bus and that will provide up to 375MBps full duplex. There are no very few mechanical HDD's that can saturate that level of bandwidth. It may be older but it's still plenty fast for most drives. Even many SSD's would have a tough time filling that bandwidth. 



80251 said:


> Would a SATA III external eSATA or USB 3.0 enclosure make any noticeable difference in performance over a SATA II external eSATA or USB 2.0 enclosure for HDD's?


If you're using an HDD as a primary drive and your system is SATA2 based, you'll be fine. No need to buy a SATA3 card. You'll still be fine even if you buy and SSD because 375MBps is fast enough to make any OS feel snappy.



Mussels said:


> Somehow the world's fastest hard drive can now rival SSD speeds | PC Gamer
> 
> New 14TB drive advertised by seagate as 525MB/s


That drive is an extreme exception rather than the rule. Most consumer level HDD's are not going to get to that speed.



Andy Shiekh said:


> Very clever how they finally start moving heads independently.


Better late than never. I'm still waiting for drives that have multiple head arrays. For example two sets of heads, one set on each side of the platters.


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## Shrek (May 24, 2021)

lexluthermiester said:


> Better late than never. I'm still waiting for drives that have multiple head arrays. For example two sets of heads, one set on each side of the platters.


I seem to recall that has been tried in the past.

Exclusive: The Dual Actuator/Head Hard Drive | Tom's Hardware (tomshardware.com)


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## lexluthermiester (May 24, 2021)

Andy Shiekh said:


> I seem to recall that has been tried in the past.
> 
> Exclusive: The Dual Actuator/Head Hard Drive | Tom's Hardware (tomshardware.com)


Cool! Patented in 1994? Why has this never been used? WTH?!?


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## Shrek (May 24, 2021)

It drives the use of smaller platters which defeats the objective of faster transfer.


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## lexluthermiester (May 24, 2021)

Andy Shiekh said:


> It drives the use of smaller platters which defeats the objective of faster transfer.


Maybe.


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## ExcuseMeWtf (May 24, 2021)

Mussels said:


> Somehow the world's fastest hard drive can now rival SSD speeds | PC Gamer
> 
> New 14TB drive advertised by seagate as 525MB/s



Can't for access time/IOPS though.


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## claylomax (May 24, 2021)

QuietBob said:


> Very unlikely. This is the last WD Velociraptor from 2012, probably the fastest 10,000 rpm consumer drive there was:
> 
> View attachment 199911



I have the exact same drive and it does a bit more than 200MB/s


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## Shrek (May 24, 2021)

claylomax said:


> I have the exact same drive and it does a bit more than 200MB/s


My 3.5" Firecuda does a bit less than 200 MB/s, probably a lot more when using its Solid State cache


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## claylomax (May 24, 2021)

Andy Shiekh said:


> My 3.5" Firecuda does a bit less than 200 MB/s, probably more when using its Solid State cache



I mean his motherboard is holding that drive. When I first got mine I had the same issue.

I have a 4TB Seagate Barracuda that's faster than my Velocirapor, except in access time.


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## R-T-B (May 24, 2021)

lexluthermiester said:


> Cool! Patented in 1994? Why has this never been used? WTH?!?


the company that made it went bankrupt in spectacular fashion IIRC, complete with shipping out cement blocks to fill RMAs they could not fill.


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## lexluthermiester (May 24, 2021)

R-T-B said:


> the company that made it went bankrupt in spectacular fashion IIRC, complete with shipping out cement blocks to fill RMAs they could not fill.


Wouldn't that mean the patent would be open for purchase and licensing?


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## Shrek (May 24, 2021)

Exclusive: The Dual Actuator/Head Hard Drive | Tom's Hardware (tomshardware.com)

"Later on when Seagate acquired Conner, the intellectual property transferred to Seagate."


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## lexluthermiester (May 24, 2021)

Andy Shiekh said:


> Exclusive: The Dual Actuator/Head Hard Drive | Tom's Hardware (tomshardware.com)
> 
> "Later on when Seagate acquired Conner, the intellectual property transferred to Seagate."


So what the hell is Seagate waiting for?


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## R-T-B (May 24, 2021)

lexluthermiester said:


> Wouldn't that mean the patent would be open for purchase and licensing?


Looks like I had my companies confused.

Connor Periphreals made the DA design, and it was aquired by Seagate.

I was confusing them with miniscribe.


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## Shrek (May 24, 2021)

They have started
Seagate’s new Mach.2 is the world’s fastest conventional hard drive | Ars Technica


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## lexluthermiester (May 24, 2021)

Andy Shiekh said:


> They have started
> Seagate’s new Mach.2 is the world’s fastest conventional hard drive | Ars Technica


That's not quite the same. An improvement sure, but that is just dividing one set of heads to actuate independently. I want to see two separate sets of heads in one drive.


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## Tomgang (May 24, 2021)

Interesting that they still developing hdd technology. Even throw SSD is pretty much bound to overtake hdd completely as SSD pricing is dropping. All throw SSD taking over completely is still a few years away I would assume. 

Any way I am curious of what my new pair of WD Gold enterprise-class 14 TB HDD'S can do of speeds. They are no match for my Samsung 980 pro 1 and 2 tb SSD's throw.


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## lexluthermiester (May 24, 2021)

Tomgang said:


> Even throw SSD is pretty much bound to overtake hdd completely as SSD pricing is dropping.


Not really. SSD's are hitting a wall for several reasons. 
1. NAND yeilds have reached the ceiling of what can be reasonable to expect for 3D-TLC.
2. TLC is the upper limit of what can be expected to be reasonably durable because...
3. QLC is pathetically weak at less than 600 P/E cycles making it completely unsuitable for mainstream storage use.
4. There is only so many NAND chips that can be mounted on an M.2 form factor device, severely limiting drive capacities.
5. NAND in general is reaching the upper limits of how fast it can be expected to run.
6. Magnetic storage is continuing to make progress in both capacity and speed, keeping a reasonable pace with SSD tech.



Tomgang said:


> They are no match for my Samsung 980 pro 1 and 2 tb SSD's


They are not meant to be. They are designed for mass storage at reasonable cost and speed. They can not compete with SSD's in raw speed any more than SSD's can compete in total storage capacity. Example;








						Seagate Exos X16 14TB 7200 RPM Enterprise Hard Drive - Newegg.com
					

Buy Seagate Exos X16 14TB 7200 RPM SATA 6Gb/s 3.5-Inch Enterprise Hard Drive (ST14000NM001G) with fast shipping and top-rated customer service. Once you know, you Newegg!




					www.newegg.com
				



14TB SATA 3.5" HDD









						Western Digital Blue 2.5" 4TB SATA III 3D NAND SSD - Newegg.com
					

Buy Western Digital Blue 2.5" 4TB SATA III 3D NAND Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) WDS400T2B0A with fast shipping and top-rated customer service. Once you know, you Newegg!




					www.newegg.com
				



4TB SATA 2.5" SSD









						XPG SPECTRIX RGB Gaming SSD S40G Series: 4TB Internal PCIe Gen3x4 M.2 2280 NVME - Newegg.com
					

Buy XPG SPECTRIX RGB Gaming SSD S40G Series: 4TB Internal PCIe Gen3x4 M.2 2280 NVME with fast shipping and top-rated customer service. Once you know, you Newegg!




					www.newegg.com
				



4TB NVMe SSD

As you can see, SSD's are nowhere near HDD's in capacity at similar price-points.


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## QuietBob (May 24, 2021)

claylomax said:


> I have the exact same drive and it does a bit more than 200MB/s





claylomax said:


> I mean his motherboard is holding that drive. When I first got mine I had the same issue.


Interesting, could you post your benchmark results with the same settings?


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## MIRTAZAPINE (May 25, 2021)

lexluthermiester said:


> So what the hell is Seagate waiting for?



This kinda remind me someone saying often times it is patent and licensing taking a way innovation from the being sold to market. One example is 3D printing  technology, the tech have existed since the 90s but it it only recently in mid 2010s that it was mass marketed due to licensing expiring being free up making cost plummet way down for the masses. I guess this is what happened with the tech I guess for HDD.
HDD is just soo in need of speed boost. It took like almost a day to write/delete my whole 18TB enterprise HDD even at its 280MB/s speed. It would be a nightmare going space larger than that.

For general layman consumers, SSD pretty much replaces HDD for them. As many don't use that much space and a 1TB ssd would be sufficient and with most people using things on the cloud or streaming. For datahoarder and preservation data oriented person like me HDD is here to stay. The most development for HDD nowadays is in the 3.5 inch format, 2.5 format have been stagnant for a many years now maxing out at 5TB. I wish 2.5 inch is develop further in the future but ssd have caught with it in terms of space but not price. This is like how the ipod 1.8 format was replace by flash. 

As much as I hate the recent craze of the HDD crypto Chia which makes once cheap drives totally skyrocketing high, it would probably give HDD manufacturer more funding and incentive to push HDD tech faster now.


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## lexluthermiester (May 25, 2021)

MIRTAZAPINE said:


> As much as I hate the recent craze of the HDD crypto Chia which makes once cheap drives totally skyrocketing high, it would probably give HDD manufacturer more funding and incentive to push HDD tech faster now.


That could happen, but with the Chinese gov banning it outright, there might be some difficulties with Chia taking hold..


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## Hardcore Games (Jun 6, 2021)

I support banning Chia, Bitcoin et al


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