Can I use a SATA 3 drive on SATA 1 controller (120GB HyperX SAVAGE SSD SATA 3 on Intel® 945 Express Chipset with SATA 1)

[manoska]

Hello folks

Laptop is Toshiba Satellite A135-S4467.
Upgraded the memory from 1GB to 4GB.
Mainly used for MS office apps or web browsing or perhaps a movie everynow and then.

While browsing the site I noticed some interesting SATA III SSDs.
Was thinking of spending (up to) $100 in order to obtain a small 120GB SSD
which together with the memory
would give the laptop a few more years of life
(vs spending >$700 to purchase a new one)

Q1
Will it work?
If not please disregard the rest of the questions.

Q2
Will I get the extra speed
by switching from HD to SSD
if controller is SATA 1 and SSD is SATA 3?

Q3
How much extra speed?

example:
from a quick check on transfer rates
120GB HyperX SAVAGE SSD SATA 3
looks faster than
120GB SSDNow V300 SATA 3
and a bit more expensive.

However if used in a SATA 1 controller do I get that extra speed?
Or should I simply get the cheapest SSD I can find since with using SATA1 controllers speed is going to be very slow anyway?

Does it slow down because of other factors (ie DVDs)?

Many thanks in advance for your answers
Manolis

 

[Phillip Corcoran]

Yes you can, SATA as backwards compatible. Just remember you won't get SATA III performance from a SATA III drive, only SATA I.

SSD will still be faster than an HDD though, irrespective of your computer's SATA spec.

 

[Boogieman_WD]

Hey there, Manolis.
Basically, you could use a SATA III SSD on a SATA I port, but you won't get the extra speed. Even the slowest SSD would be bottlenecked by the SATA I interface, because it's max speed is only 150MB/s (which would also bottleneck a little, most of the 7200RPM drives as well). I would recommend against getting a SATA III SSD, because the technology was pretty new back then and there's a chance that this might not work. Although they should be compatible in theory, sometimes because of firmware updates in a combination with the old SATA I interface, leads to weird incompatibility issues. And this is not very easy to track down either, because sometimes it works perfectly fine and sometimes not (without the extra speed boost).
To sum up - you could probably find compatible SSDs for you laptop model, but in my opinion, it won't be worth it.

If you're doing this because of slow downs, you could try some other stuff. One of the best solutions is to backup your important data, wipe the drive clean and install the OS from scratch.
Other not so excessive methods include - defragmentation of your HDD, disk cleanup, removing possible viruses, malware, etc.
You could take a look at this article as well: http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/how-to/windows/3499097/how-tidy-up-your-pc-or-laptop/

Hope that helps.
Boogieman_WD

 

[manoska]

Yo ...

The sentence below gave me the answer I wanted.
**********
Even the slowest SSD would be bottlenecked by the SATA I interface, because it's max speed is only 150MB/s (which would also bottleneck a little, most of the 7200RPM drives as well).
**********

If SATA1 bottlenecks the 7200 RPM HDD drives (even a little) then
even if I used the cheapest SSD drive I can find,,,
I probably won't be able to actually experience any increase in speed
because SATA1 would bottleneck it as it does to the 7200 RPM HDD
(of I'm not sure if the current drive is even 7200RPM but it doesn't matter)

Wow!! I was actually under the impression
that SATA1 was much faster than an HDD drive

For the time spent to write the answer
sending an extra thanks Boogieman!!

regards
Manolis

Hey there, Manolis.

Basically, you could use a SATA III SSD on a SATA I port, but you won't get the extra speed. Even the slowest SSD would be bottlenecked by the SATA I interface, because it's max speed is only 150MB/s (which would also bottleneck a little, most of the 7200RPM drives as well). I would recommend against getting a SATA III SSD, because the technology was pretty new back then and there's a chance that this might not work. Although they should be compatible in theory, sometimes because of firmware updates in a combination with the old SATA I interface, leads to weird incompatibility issues. And this is not very easy to track down either, because sometimes it works perfectly fine and sometimes not (without the extra speed boost).
To sum up - you could probably find compatible SSDs for you laptop model, but in my opinion, it won't be worth it.

If you're doing this because of slow downs, you could try some other stuff. One of the best solutions is to backup your important data, wipe the drive clean and install the OS from scratch.
Other not so excessive methods include - defragmentation of your HDD, disk cleanup, removing possible viruses, malware, etc.
You could take a look at this article as well: http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/how-to/windows/3499097/how-tidy-up-your-pc-or-laptop/

Hope that helps.
Boogieman_WD

 

[Boogieman_WD]

You're most welcome.
I'm not sure if I understood correctly this part "that SATA1 was much faster than an HDD drive". SATA is a type of computer bus interface. The old HDDs used PATA (or also IDE or ATA) and the newer ones (including the SSDs) use SATA. Which with time has come up with a few revisions e.g. SATA I, SATA II and SATA III. If you are interested to learn more, here you can find all you need to know about it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_ATA
As for the HDD bottleneck, yes it is possible if the HDD has faster read/write speeds than 150MB/s, it will be bottlenecked by SATA I, but it would work just fine on SATA II which allows speeds of up to 300MB/s and SATA III which allows speeds of up to 600MB/s

Hope that helps to clarify things a bit.
Let me know if you have any questions, I'll be glad to answer them.

Cheers!

 

[madmatt30]

An ssd will still be far faster than a 7200rpm platter drive even on a sata 1 interface.
Its the seek times that make the difference 90% of the time not the actual throughput of the sata interface.
Platter drives are mechanical & the head has to move to each data area - with nand flash its instantaneous.

So yes you will still benefit but you are better just going for the cheapest available drive which is pretty much the Kingston.

 

[Boogieman_WD]

Hey madmatt30.
Yep, you're right about the access time. And right on the spot with the explanation. The response time would definitely be faster (0.2-0.6ms for the SSD in comparison to 11-12ms for the HDD), but still note that those are milliseconds and having in mind that the loading time would still be bottlenecked, in my opinion it won't be worth it that much. Then again, this is probably a bit up to personal preference.

 

[manoska]

In my haste I probably wrote it incorrectly.
What I meant was that the HDD
can "seek/write" data in bulk,,
faster than the SATA1 can "transfer" it to the bus so that they end-up in main memory.

I'm also aware that seek time is different depending on the data requested and the state of the drive, etc, ....
plus write time is again different in various cases
so I oversimplified the question from the perspective of a (very) lazy consumer

"will there be a $60 worth,,, -noticeable- difference?"

I'm also aware of the difference between a communications interface and the hard drive itself but thanks for the links, they're always useful.

btw the laptop is already rebuilt
so the drive is clean and fragmented

thanks again man
Manolis

You're most welcome.
I'm not sure if I understood correctly this part "that SATA1 was much faster than an HDD drive". SATA is a type of computer bus interface. The old HDDs used PATA (or also IDE or ATA) and the newer ones (including the SSDs) use SATA. Which with time has come up with a few revisions e.g. SATA I, SATA II and SATA III. If you are interested to learn more, here you can find all you need to know about it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_ATA
As for the HDD bottleneck, yes it is possible if the HDD has faster read/write speeds than 150MB/s, it will be bottlenecked by SATA I, but it would work just fine on SATA II which allows speeds of up to 300MB/s and SATA III which allows speeds of up to 600MB/s

Hope that helps to clarify things a bit.
Let me know if you have any questions, I'll be glad to answer them.

Cheers!

 

[manoska]

The question is
are those 0.2-0.6ms for the SSD
(in comparison to 11-12ms for the HDD)
"transferable" in the same speed via SATA1.

Meaning if SSD queries data within 0.2-0.6 ms
but data is delayed in SATA1 and ends up arriving in the bus after 11-12 ms then ....


So from the conversation
should I assume that
a.
for short data bursts I will notice a difference
which might mean it's worth the money
cause the mem is only 3GB (1GB used for display)
thus there might be a lot of swapping

b.
but for large data requests (ie. booting time)
performance will be pretty much the same?

My apologies if the questions are stupid

thanks
Manolis

 

[Boogieman_WD]

No worries mate. The questions are not at all stupid. For booting there should be a noticeable difference, but e.g. when loading a game - it would still be almost the same as if loaded from an HDD if it maxes out the SATA I interface's capabilities. It would start the loading process faster (because of the much faster access time), but when it starts loading, there won't be much of a difference. And you're quite right about the "larger and smaller data requests". The more and smaller files a program/game needs to load - the more noticeable the difference would be, but if it's the other way around it would seem as if it's almost the same as the HDD's speed.
So it's up to you to decide if it's worth it or not. There's no wrong answer here, just a matter of personal preference.

 

[manoska]

Aaaah ok

So I guess,,,
- if I can see a difference in booting time AND file swapping,,
- and if the (particular) laptop is used mainly for office and browsing
(where the extra speed might make it look a bit new and refreshed)
then I might as well get the smallest/cheapest one and try it out.
Kingston says it's compatible so let's see ...

thanks again folks!!

 

[madmatt30]

^ you'll also notice that an ssd runs totally silent & at a very low temp - laptop hard drives run notoriously hot as a rule.
I think you'll still benefit ,just no point buying one of the higher end models.