Sata 3 internal hard drive

[Stephen137]

Is there a way to determine the interface protocol of an internal hard drive, SATA 2 versus SATA 3 based upon appearance of the drive or some electronic review. So far I have found that I would have to depend on the printed description by the manufacturer rather than a physical inspection or review of the firmware.

 

[nhasian]

wouldn't the bios tell you if its SATAII or SATA3?

 

[Stephen137]

wouldn't the bios tell you if its SATAII or SATA3?

Sorry to be so dim but I don't know how to read the bios. When I went to Seagate technical support with my question about the speed of the model of the Seagate hard drive I purchased they led me to believe that there was no straightforward way to determine the interface speed and that they assumed that because it was a 7200 ROM with a 64 MB Cache it probably was a SATA III hard drive. (The hard drive I purchased had a model number and a part number not recognized by the Seagate database on Barracuda internal hard drives. How would I go about reading the bios to determine the speed of the interface?

 

[fantastik250]

I would honestly tell you, that a hard drive will have the same speed difference regardless if it's in SATA II or SATA III. An average 7200 RPM will not be able to max out a SATA II interface.

 

[Stephen137]

I agree. That is why I was looking for a physical or electronic way of determining SATA III from SATA II. The tech support from Seagate is assuming that the drive I had was identical to the one they are selling now with 2 TB, 7200 RPM spin speed and 64 MB of cache. That is described by the Seagate website as SATA III. My model is the STBD2000101 and the one being sold now is ST2000DM001. I went to Seagates website and there was no record of my model number or product number, 9JB1N3, in a search. I expect the technician's guess is correct, but I would like to verify independently. I still find it a bit surprising that there is no other way of determining the SATA interface speed of a hard drive except by taking the word of the supplier.

Thanks for your time in commenting.

 

[fantastik250]

Well, doing a simple Newegg search, it's possibly either a SATA I or SATA II. You can determine the speed through a benchmark.

Your model is shown (STBD2000101)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148910

Newegg would have posted SATA 6.0Gb/s if it was a SATA III drive.

 

[Stephen137]

After a little more searching and verifying I came across another interesting wrinkle. When I was searching the model at Seagate I was using the model number on the bar code of the container box. It also listed the hard drive's serial number on the bar code information. I just removed the drive from my case and found that the serial number agrees with the box, but the model number on the hard drive is listed as ST2000DM001. So it looks like they used the boxes showing an incorrect or an old model number. I bought a SATA drive with a box listing one model and the drive itself listing a different one. I would be concerned except this hard drive comes with the old 5 year warranty. If the benchmark test, from my SSD to the hard drive, shows speeds faster than the 3 gps of the SATA II drive I'll be ok.