Plan to Upgrade to SSD. Need help finding SATA interface

[sharpshooter96]

Hello everyone,

This is my first post here at tomshardware. I am looking to upgrade my Hp Pavilion dv7-3079wm with a SSD. My first question is what would be the pros & cons in your opinion to running 1 larger SSD or since I have two hard drive bays going with a smaller SSD for the OS and then putting a 7200rpm HDD in the second bay for storage of files etc. ? I havent really decided which way to go yet on this topic.

My second question is I want to make sure with either setup that I get the fastest SSD that my PC can handle. I understand that if I go for say a SATA 3 but my PC only handles up to SATA 2 speed then its pretty much a waste because my PC wont be able to make use of the full speed of the SATA 3. I have used CPU-ID, Belarc Advisor, and looked up info directly on my laptop based on the model and I haven't really come across a definitive answer to which SATA interface my PC has.

Some info I have gotten from these programs are:
Board: Quanta 363A 33.22
Standard AHCI 1.0 Serial ATA Controller
Chipset AMD 785G

The closest to a direct answer that I have come across is here:
http://www.cnet.com/laptops/hp-pavilion-dv7-3079wm/4507-3121_7-33873854.html
Under Storage it says for the Interface-Serial ATA-150

Serial ATA-150 is only SATA 1 so I am hoping that not right because I was hoping to at least have SATA 2 or 3. If thats what I have though then I guess thats what I will have to go with.

Curious though, when I run a system scan at Crucial.com it recommends SATA 2 SSD as being compatible with my laptop? If the cnet site is right then wouldn't getting a SATA 2 be overkill and it would be a waste of extra speed that my laptop could never make use of?

I know there are many questions I have in this one post but hopefully you all can help me out and point me in the right direction for this upgrade. If your doing something you might as well do it right the first time, right? I am also going to max out my system memory but I have that all figured out

Thanks

 

[inzone]

You can pretty much tell what you have for a sata controller by how old the laptop is since the different sata controllers came out at different times.
The reason the scan said to use a sata 2 is so that you will use the full capacity of the sata 1 port.
So now that you know you have a sata 1 port you can purchase a sata 2 SSD and there are are still some of those for sale and you will notice a boost in performance because a typical laptop hard drive spins at 5400 rpm or slower and the transfer speeds will be well under 100 nb/s, possibly even under 50 mb/s.
Even if you put a 7200 rpm hard drive in you'll still be under 100 mb/s transfer speeds but it will be good for a storage drive. As far as to the size of the SSD I would go with a 256 gb size because that allows you to put the OS and some of your most used programs on the SSD. If cost is a factor then a 180 gb size would be the next choice and to go lower will force you to monitor the capacity of the SSD so as to not go over 80% capacity.

 

[mad-max79]

I think your Notebook has a SATA 3 Gb/s port. The mentioned SATA-150 maybe means your HDD.
All current SSDs are using SATA 6 Gb/s, but SATA is backward compliant, so go for a nowadays SSD.
I like Samsung ssd, because they are fast and reliable. The 830 series is currently leaving market and when you get the chance grab one from sales. But the new 840 is also pretty good.