# Is SATA 6Gb backward compatible with SATA 3Gb?



## Radi_SVK (Nov 25, 2010)

Simple as it is question.After research Im pretty much sure about positive answer,but wanted to ask you guys too...


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## newtekie1 (Nov 25, 2010)

Yes.


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## Radi_SVK (Nov 25, 2010)

newtekie1 said:


> Yes.



Thanks..after I started the thread,on the bottom of the page another exactly same thread showed up..So moderators feel free to delete mine.I honestly was looking for it,but didnt spot it in the endless sea of threads


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## fusionblu (Nov 25, 2010)

It is compatible, although it would work like this:

SATA III Device/ Cable into SATA II Port: The connection would be running at the fastest speed of the port which would be SATA II Speed which would be a speed decrease.

SATA II Device/ Cable into SATA III Port: The connection would be running at the fastest speed of the port which would be SATA III Speed which would be a speed increase.​Of course for ultimate speed it would be using a SATA III Device/ Cable that is connected into a SATA III Port.


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## newtekie1 (Nov 25, 2010)

fusionblu said:


> It is compatible, although it would work like this:
> 
> SATA III Device/ Cable into SATA II Port: The connection would be running at the fastest speed of the port which would be SATA II Speed which would be a speed decrease.
> 
> SATA II Device/ Cable into SATA III Port: The connection would be running at the fastest speed of the port which would be SATA III Speed which would be a speed increase.​Of course for ultimate speed it would be using a SATA III Device/ Cable that is connected into a SATA III Port.



Actually it doesn't work that way.

It works at the lowest common denominator.  So SATA II device connected to a SATA III port will run at SATA II speed, there will be no speed increase.  Not that it really matters because SATA II devices don't actually use all of the bandwidth available to them with SATA II anyway, except for maybe a few very high end SSDs.  But most mechanical drives barely max out SATA I.


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## overclocking101 (Nov 25, 2010)

newtekie1 said:


> Actually it doesn't work that way.
> 
> It works at the lowest common denominator.  So SATA II device connected to a SATA III port will run at SATA II speed, there will be no speed increase.  Not that it really matters because SATA II devices don't actually use all of the bandwidth available to them with SATA II anyway, except for maybe a few very high end SSDs.  But most mechanical drives barely max out SATA I.



you beat m to it. its a common misconception that saa2 will run faster on sata 3 but it dont. and as tekie said there are not very many things that max sata2 out atm so sata 3 really isnt needed yet


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## newtekie1 (Nov 25, 2010)

overclocking101 said:


> you beat m to it. its a common misconception that saa2 will run faster on sata 3 but it dont. and as tekie said there are not very many things that max sata2 out atm so sata 3 really isnt needed yet



Yeah, and I always shake my head when I see a mechanical SATA 6.0Gbp/s drive.  Because it is a total marketting gimmick.  Even the fastest consumer level mechanical drive doesn't top 150MB/s transfer speeds.


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## fusionblu (Nov 25, 2010)

Thanks you people for correcting that misconception of mine.


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## W1zzard (Nov 25, 2010)

you also dont need any special cables for sata 6 gb/s. the specification recommends "good" cables because of the high data rate. any cheap cable should be able to handle that, but some companies try to make extra money off consumers by marketing cables as sata 6 gb/s


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## Radi_SVK (Nov 25, 2010)

W1zzard said:


> but some companies try to make extra money off consumers by marketing cables as sata 6 gb/s



agree,I think I've just briefly read yesterday review (or preview,probably an older one) of first SATA III HDD from Seagate and they also tried to upsale "special" SATA 6GB cables...

Im so excited guys,Im making some upgrades to my system.Selling my Asus P6T Deluxe along with i7 920 and instead getting the mighty ROG Rampage III Extreme with i7 950..also you could give a bit of a help to decide wether to change the Noctua NH-U12P SE for H70( my girl is willing to buy it for me for Xmas 
The thing is,the Noctua (even with i7 920) above 3.2GHz simply is not giving satisfying results
and Prime 95 is murdering it...


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## n-ster (Nov 27, 2010)

W1zzard said:


> you also dont need any special cables for sata 6 gb/s. the specification recommends "good" cables because of the high data rate. any cheap cable should be able to handle that, but some companies try to make extra money off consumers by marketing cables as sata 6 gb/s



if I had known before lol... Only like 10$ out the window but still

It was back when SATA III was brand spanking new though, so I forgive myself


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## Mussels (Nov 27, 2010)

i edited the title to say Gb instead of GB, it annoys me when people mess that up.


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## SabreWulf69 (Nov 27, 2010)

Computers used to more or less tend to run as fast overall as the slowest component (hence the term bottleneck). Not so much these days, but depending on how a system is bottlenecked it can determine if one specific thing is going to drag down the rest of the system. Regarding SATA standards, this is one of the things besides as mentioned the exception of a few select high end SSD's that doesn't really matter. Also short answer, yes, SATA 2 is backwards compatible with SATA 3 and vice versa.


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## Radi_SVK (Nov 28, 2010)

Mussels said:


> i edited the title to say Gb instead of GB, it annoys me when people mess that up.



Im utterly sorry sir


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