500Gb 7200 rpm HDD upgrade - what is the SATA link speed?

[mustgroove]

I've got a Mid 2010 15" MBP with the factory 500GB 7200 rpm hard drive upgrade... Despite having a 3 gigabit SATA ports, Apple tended to use drives with 1.5 gigabit SATA interfaces for their 7200 rpm factory upgrade drives...

Just wondering if they're still doing the same thing now that Early 2011 MBPs have 6 gigabit SATA ports? If anyone has bought one of these new machines with a 7200 rpm factory upgraded drive - please post the drive's SATA link speed - 1.5, 3 or possibly even (although highly unlikely) 6 gigabit?

 

[simsaladimbamba]

HDDs, even with 7200RPM, don't saturate the S-ATA 1-5Gb/s interface, so why use a 3.0Gb/s interface?

 

[jimithing]

HDDs, even with 7200RPM, don't saturate the S-ATA 1-5Gb/s interface, so why use a 3.0Gb/s interface?

I dont know much... but im learning... can you better explain this? like I have no idea what that means at all

 

[simsaladimbamba]

I dont know much... but im learning... can you better explain this? like I have no idea what that means at all

S-ATA 1.5Gb/s (Gigabit per second) offers a theoretical speed of 1.5Gb/s, or 192MB/s. In real life it is closer to 150MB/s (1.2Gb/s), and as HDDs (Hard Disk Drive, the storage medium using rotating platters and magnetism to store data) don't come close to the 150MB/s (except when in RAID), why waste an S-ATA 3.0 or 6.0 Gb/s controller?
S-ATA 3.0 Gb/s offers around 300MB/s, S-ATA 6.0Gb/s offers around 600MB/s. Those speeds can be used for SSDs (storage medium using NAND flash memory, like the one used in USB thumbdrives or RAM, but many times faster (180MB/s to open end) than thumbdrives (5 to 20 MB/s, but slower than RAM (which can go to 17GB/s - yes, Gigabyte per second)).

More can be found via a search engine of your choice, as there are many guides out there to explain this a lot better.

 

[mustgroove]

simsaladimbamba - I'm not arguing that any particular configuration is better or worse than any other, I'm simply asking what kind of drives Apple are supplying for their factory 7200 rpm upgrades...

 

[grahamnp]

I don't believe that any modern 2.5" HDD is anything below SATA2. If it reports as 1.5 gigabits, it is probably a reporting error.

 

[simsaladimbamba]

I don't believe that any modern 2.5" HDD is anything below SATA2. If it reports as 1.5 gigabits, it is probably a reporting error.

But do you know? Believe ≠ know.

I don't know if a Hitachi Travelstar is still considered modern, but it is still using an S-ATA 1.5Gb/s interface (320GB HDD, bought last year).
But there are also S-ATA 3.0Gb/s HDDs out there: http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/document.do?lndocid=MIGR-73164

 

[mustgroove]

Soooooo back to the original question

Has anyone bought an Early 2011 MBP with the factory 7200 rpm 500Gb hard drive upgrade, and if so, what does system profiler say is the hard drive's negotiated link speed?