Does a HDD need SATA III?

[prince_xaine]

Sorry for "too much information" I try to be as specific as possible, so as to receive any advice that may prevent my premature ruin.

Current configuration:

SATA III Ports
SATA_0: Samsung 850 Evo 500GB (Windows 10)
SATA_1: Western Digital Black Performance 6TB (Games)

SATA II Ports
SATA_2: 500GB HDD (Media Storage)
SATA_3: Optical Drive

-> I have two optical drives in my system. These are both being replaced by Drive Bay fans, as I don't need an Optical Drive to begin with. These intake fans are to help for better airflow, even if it doesn't make much difference. As such, the SATA_3 port is now open.

-> I am putting a 120GB Kingston SSD into the SATA_1 slot. Then every other drive in the current configuration will be moved down a slot, which will put the current SATA_1 HDD into the SATA_2 slot.

? - The current SATA_1 drive achieves about 250 MB/s read AND write speeds on the SATA 3.0 interface. Will this be lower on the SATA 2.0 interface? Or will it be marginal at best?

New Configuration:
SATA III Ports
SATA_0: Samsung 850 Evo 500GB (Windows 10)
SATA_1: Kingston A400 120GB (Programs/Page file)

SATA II Ports
SATA_2: Western Digital Black Performance 6TB (games)
SATA_3: 500GB HDD (Media Storage)

 

[CaptainCretin]

HDDs, (as opposed to SSDs), dont get anywhere near maxing out even SATA1, so no, it doesnt need to be a SATA3 port. With an SSD, you can see a small drop in performance between SATA3 and SATA1, but in real life, it isnt really noticeable.

(Example; My old SSD is fitted in my daughters SATA1 board, it gets about 445MBps; far faster than any HDD can achieve)

 

[prince_xaine]

HDDs, (as opposed to SSDs), dont get anywhere near maxing out even SATA1, so no, it doesnt need to be a SATA3 port. With an SSD, you can see a small drop in performance between SATA3 and SATA1, but in real life, it isnt really noticeable.

(Example; My old SSD is fitted in my daughters SATA1 board, it gets about 445MBps; far faster than any HDD can achieve)

Thanks for the solid answer!

 

[TechyInAZ]

Please backup your claim CaptainCretin. From my personal experience, that is absolutely wrong. HDDs of today can EASILY saturate even SATA 2 speeds. I've noticed when i run backups that my bandwidth does increase when going from sata 2 to sata 3.

 

[CaptainCretin]

Please backup your claim CaptainCretin. From my personal experience, that is absolutely wrong. HDDs of today can EASILY saturate even SATA 2 speeds. I've noticed when i run backups that my bandwidth does increase when going from sata 2 to sata 3.

"Even though the fastest BarraCuda Pro models go toe to toe with Western Digital’s Black drives, the Pro’s performance varies a lot between different capacities. 4TB and 10TB versions are the fastest, reaching up to 204MB/s seq. read and 197MB/s seq. write."

And that is a FAST, Pro grade HDD; at the outermost section of the platter it can JUST beat the SATA1 limit of 1.5Gbps. SATA2 is double that rate, so the fastest modern HDDs wont even make it sweat, and to SATA3 it is just a trickle.

https://hddmag.com/fastest-internal-hard-disk-drives-hdd/ About 35% of the way down the page.

According to Wiki (hmmm) typical speed of a 7k2 rpm drive is 1Gbps.

 

[popatim]

Sata 2 caps out at around 250MB/s. It takes a very fast HDD to accomplish this (outside of buffer transfers) and there are none that I am aware of currently. Seems like they all cap out at under 250MB/s which sata 2 can handle especially when you consider that an HDD can only hit those speeds in sequential workloads.

 

[Rogue Leader]

HDDs, (as opposed to SSDs), dont get anywhere near maxing out even SATA1, so no, it doesnt need to be a SATA3 port. With an SSD, you can see a small drop in performance between SATA3 and SATA1, but in real life, it isnt really noticeable.

(Example; My old SSD is fitted in my daughters SATA1 board, it gets about 445MBps; far faster than any HDD can achieve)

This is physically impossible

https://kb.sandisk.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/8142/~/difference-between-sata-i%2C-sata-ii-and-sata-iii

SATA 1 is 150mbps. A fast HDD can saturate SATA 1 no problem, SATA 2 on the other hand not so much.

 

[prince_xaine]

Thanks guys for the reiterations. So just to make sure, will my HDD be any slower? I understand that no drive truly maxes out the SATA port, like a SSD will get 280 MB/s on a SATA II port, instead of 300 MB/s as someone would expect. So if my drive achieves 250 MB/s, this should be untouched by the slower interface correct?

 

[Rogue Leader]

Thanks guys for the reiterations. So just to make sure, will my HDD be any slower? I understand that no drive truly maxes out the SATA port, like a SSD will get 280 MB/s on a SATA II port, instead of 300 MB/s as someone would expect. So if my drive achieves 250 MB/s, this should be untouched by the slower interface correct?

Right for an HDD SATA 2 vs SATA 3 you won't notice any performance difference.

 

[prince_xaine]

Thanks guys for the reiterations. So just to make sure, will my HDD be any slower? I understand that no drive truly maxes out the SATA port, like a SSD will get 280 MB/s on a SATA II port, instead of 300 MB/s as someone would expect. So if my drive achieves 250 MB/s, this should be untouched by the slower interface correct?

Right for an HDD SATA 2 vs SATA 3 you won't notice any performance difference.

Thank you.

 

[CaptainCretin]

Sata 2 caps out at around 250MB/s. It takes a very fast HDD to accomplish this (outside of buffer transfers) and there are none that I am aware of currently. Seems like they all cap out at under 250MB/s which sata 2 can handle especially when you consider that an HDD can only hit those speeds in sequential workloads.

HDDs, (as opposed to SSDs), dont get anywhere near maxing out even SATA1, so no, it doesnt need to be a SATA3 port. With an SSD, you can see a small drop in performance between SATA3 and SATA1, but in real life, it isnt really noticeable.

(Example; My old SSD is fitted in my daughters SATA1 board, it gets about 445MBps; far faster than any HDD can achieve)

This is physically impossible

https://kb.sandisk.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/8142/~/difference-between-sata-i%2C-sata-ii-and-sata-iii

SATA 1 is 150mbps. A fast HDD can saturate SATA 1 no problem, SATA 2 on the other hand not so much.

Sorry, it was late and I was thinking one set of numbers, while my hands typed completely different, 1445Mbps, not 445MBps. It happens.

I re-read something I posted the other day and realised I had typed "Microshart" instead of "Micro$oft".

The point is, the figures for HDDs are best case sequential reads, on the fastest drives currently available; 99.9% of the time you will get far lower speeds; so the differences between the Sata protocols is hardly noticeable.

 

[popatim]

I agree. Especially considering HDD's speed larger depends on where on the platters the data is. SSD's avoid this limitation.
I have two identical (from a software point of view) older HTPC systems. The slightly older one only has Sata1 ports yet it boots up faster then the newer one with Sata3 ports (850evo) which I attribute to the faster 4k random speeds of its Patriot Pyro SE SSD. HDD speeds for 4k random don't even hit single digits

 

[prince_xaine]

Just wanted to get back to everyone! I installed the Western Digital Black HDD onto the SATA II adapter, and I still get the full 250 MB/s read and write speeds. It's performing as fast as ever, and running a dual startup configuration has made my PC as fast as ever. The Samsung 850 Evo loads all of the Windows files, and the Kingston A400 loads all of my startup programs, and has all of my other programs on it as well. This has drastically changed my boot up speeds, considering steam alone takes 10 seconds to start.

P.S. Even after changing around the configuration, the Western Digital Black HDD is still the D: Drive, and my entire configuration has remained unchanged.

Also, to optimize my drives, I do the following:
- Clean files using the built in Windows tools.
- Optimize drives using the built in Windows tools.

Is there anything I can do to squeeze a little extra performance?

 

[Rogue Leader]

Thats all you really will get out of that. Glad it worked out.

 

[popatim]

Thanks for letting us know!