sata3 with sata1 hdd

[dudrjs79]

Hi
I have a M.2 ssd sata drive. I am thinking to put sata1 3.5" hdd to my computer as a backup storage. is it good idea mix with sata 1 and sata3? is it going to slow down?? should I just buy another sata3 instead to get a full speed??

 

[Boogieman_WD]

Hey there, dudrjs79.

There shouldn't be any issue with you connecting a SATA III drive to a SATA I port. Note that the older SATA revision (version) might bottleneck the HDD a bit, depending on its specs, as SATA I has a limit of 150MB/s. Other than that you should be just fine, the SATA interface is backwards compatible.
[strike]I didn't quite understand what you meant by "buy another sata3". If your motherboard does not have any SATA III ports, you won't be able to just upgrade it to SATA III unless you get a new motherboard.[/strike]

Here's some more on the SATA interface if you're interested: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_ATA

edit: Oh, sorry I've misunderstood you. The HDD is SATA I and the port is SATA III. Well if this is the case, you're good to go, you should have no issue with the drive.

Hope that helps. Please let me know if you have any questions.
Boogieman_WD

 

[dudrjs79]

Hi
the HDD is SATA 1 and SATA3 is M.2 samsung 850 evo. if I transfer files from sata3 to sata1 or sata1 to sata3 would the speed of the read/write depends on the sata1 or sata3??
I am not sure if it is better with sata3 and sata3 instead of sata1 and sata3.

Hey there, dudrjs79.


edit: Oh, sorry I've misunderstood you. The HDD is SATA I and the port is SATA III. Well if this is the case, you're good to go, you should have no issue with the drive.

Hope that helps. Please let me know if you have any questions.
Boogieman_WD

 

[Boogieman_WD]

Well it would depend on the slower drive's speed and on the SATA I speed restriction (150MB/s). Most hard drives which are 7200RPM have speeds around 150MB/s (some of the newer drives can go up to 180-190MB/s) and the SATA I interface allows speeds of up to 150MB/s. So you won't be bottlenecked that much if you transfer data between a SATA I drive and a SATA III drive. Have in mind that those are optimal speeds and real life transfer speed is affected by more things - like your system, your drive usage, the number and size of the files you're transferring, etc. So you probably won't reach the 150MB/s in most cases, which would mean that you won't lose any speed because of the different SATA versions.

So the bottom line is this - if the SATA I drive is OK and have no issues, there's no need for you to go and get a SATA III drive, just to match the interface version of the SSD as the difference would be negligible. Furthermore the SSD can probably reach speeds ~500MB/s and you can't match that with an HDD and as mentioned above - the hard drive will determine the speed as it can't write the data at that kind of speed.