# sata 3



## Rock N Roll Rebel (Jun 21, 2011)

i know this is a dumb question but i have sata 2 and thinking of getting i ssd but its sata 3 will it work on a sata 2?


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## slyfox2151 (Jun 21, 2011)

skellattarr said:


> i know this is a dumb question but i have sata 2 and thinking of getting i ssd but its sata 3 will it work on a sata 2?



yes it will work exactly the same, only at half the speed of sata 3.


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## stevednmc (Jun 21, 2011)

Itll work just fine....But if you havent bought an ssd yet why not get a Sata2 one? Itll be cheaper....unless your gonna upgrade your mobo soon...(Fingers crossed!)


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## DanishDevil (Jun 21, 2011)

It won't be at half the speed. A lot of SATA 3 drives have read and write speeds for them running on both SATA specifications. If you're going to upgrade your motherboard within the next 6 months, get a SATA 3 drive now.


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## slyfox2151 (Jun 21, 2011)

DanishDevil said:


> It won't be at half the speed. A lot of SATA 3 drives have read and write speeds for them running on both SATA specifications. If you're going to upgrade your motherboard within the next 6 months, get a SATA 3 drive now.



since sata 2 is 300mbps and sata 3 is 600mbps.... then yes the interface is half the speed.

i never claimed the drive would be.


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## Rock N Roll Rebel (Jun 21, 2011)

on newegg all the 128 gig drives cost around the same


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## DanishDevil (Jun 21, 2011)

The question was about an SSD, and you said *it* would work at half the speed, so technically you did. Just wanted to make sure that the OP didn't misinterpret what you meant like I did.


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## TheOne (Jun 21, 2011)

Here is an example for the OP of a SATA3 drive running at SATA2 speed.

_EX:_ *Corsair Force Series 3 120GB SATA3 running at SATA2*: _(ATTO Benchmark)_
Corsairs Benchmarks can be found here: http://www.corsair.com/blog/corsair-force-series-3-ssds-are-now-with-us/

*(Corsair Rated Write: 510MB)(Half: 255MB)*
SATA2 Score: *260MB Write*

*(Corsair Rated Read: 550MB)(Half: 275MB)*
SATA2 Score: *277MB Read*


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## DanishDevil (Jun 21, 2011)

I'd be curious to see a Crucial M4, Intel 510, or Corsair P-3 on both tests. I don't think it's going to cut them in half.






Running a SATA 3 SSD on SATA 2 will not cut its read/write speeds in half. It will simply limit the maximum reads/writes at about 260MB/s (which is the realistic limit of SATA 2)

Sandforce controllers are spec'd to completely saturate the SATA specification that they were created for, and SATA 3 has twice the bandwidth of SATA 2, which is why your theory works for Sandforce drives, but not with others.


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## TheOne (Jun 21, 2011)

DanishDevil said:


> I'd be curious to see a Crucial M4, Intel 510, or Corsair P-3 on both tests. I don't think it's going to cut them in half.
> 
> http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph4253/36345.png
> 
> ...



Are you talking to me?


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## DanishDevil (Jun 21, 2011)

Anybody who is debating that a SATA 3 drive will run at half speed on SATA 2. I found it intriguing and counter-intuitive that speeds were half for Sandforce 2000 drives, so I did some research to disprove that.


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## TheOne (Jun 21, 2011)

DanishDevil said:


> Anybody who is debating that a SATA 3 drive will run at half speed on SATA 2. I found it intriguing and counter-intuitive that speeds were half for Sandforce 2000 drives, so I did some research to disprove that.



I don’t think anybody has made that claim, but indeed, performance will vary depending on controller, SF of course being the fastest available at the moment.


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## xBruce88x (Jun 21, 2011)

I'll put it this way... on a SATA 3.0gbs connection the drive will not exceed 300MB/sec. however on a sata 6.0Gbs connection, it will perform at its max speed (i've yet to see one at 600MB/sec, 514MB is the highest i've seen i think)

either way... its faster than any HDD you'll find (non insane industrial kind anyway)

basically the same idea as running a SATA3.0Gb/sec drive on a SATA1.5Gb/sec controller


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