MBP late 2011; Sata III SSD vs. Sata II HDD

[bonedaddio]

I put a Crucial M4 in the HDD slot, and moved the 750GB stock drive to an Optibay adapter. It's all working, but system profiler sez the negotiated speed on the HDD is half speed. Here's part of the report:

Intel 6 Series Chipset:

Vendor: Intel
Product: 6 Series Chipset
Link Speed: 6 Gigabit
Negotiated Link Speed: 3 Gigabit
Description: AHCI Version 1.30 Supported

APPLE HDD HTS547575A9E384:

Capacity: 750.16 GB (750,156,374,016 bytes)
Model: APPLE HDD HTS547575A9E384
Revision: JE4AD70E
Serial Number: J2640054JD39KE
​

After some, research, it looks like the main problem here is the HDD itself, it is referred to in reviews as slow, plus it's Sata II (3gb/s) which is what the report is showing... so it's going to have to go, or I'm going to need a larger (512 gb) system SSD.
I just ran a test using Windows7 (bootcamped) on first the internal HDD in the optibay vs. a Samsung 840 SSD in a Thunderbolt adapter (Seagate GoFlex desktop adapter).
Photoshop CS6 64 bit opened in 2.5 seconds (from the Win7 SSD).
Photoshop CS6 64 bit opened in 23 seconds (from the Win7 HDD). REALLY?? Yes, REALLY! Why would Apple put such a dog in a Sata III capable laptop???
'Nuff said.

 

[bcburrows]

I simply replaced the original HDD with the 750Gb hybrid drive, provides performance and capacity at a price that doesn't bend me over!

 

[robvas]

You're looking at the speed difference between SSD and HD, not SATA II vs SATA III

A laptop hard drive is barely going to do over 100MB/s, which doesn't even max out SATA I which is 1.5GB/s (or roughtly 150MB/s)

Putting a spinning hard drive on SATA III isn't going to make it one bit faster than the same drive on SATA II.

 

[NewishMacGuy]

Be aware that you can't use a SATA III drive reliably in the optibay port of a 2011 cMBP-15. Its a pretty well documented issue on the OWC site.

 

[bonedaddio]

Be aware that you can't use a SATA III drive reliably in the optibay port of a 2011 cMBP-15. Its a pretty well documented issue on the OWC site.

I thought that was an issue with booting??!! I will take a look again, I just want that bay for storage... but that drive is pretty slow.
Sigh. The larger SSD is starting to look inevitable. (OSX ML partition, Win7 partition with Master Collection on each, plus Lightwave 3D and various support softwares = 512 gb SSD. Ouch.

----------

You're looking at the speed difference between SSD and HD, not SATA II vs SATA III

A laptop hard drive is barely going to do over 100MB/s, which doesn't even max out SATA I which is 1.5GB/s (or roughtly 150MB/s)

Putting a spinning hard drive on SATA III isn't going to make it one bit faster than the same drive on SATA II.

Actual testing in this thread:
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1519473/
Real testing; internal Sata III bus should be similar:
GoFlex TB adapter, Seagate Sata3 2TB HDD:
Write: 187 — Read: 183
It would appear that a spinning hard drive that's actually Sata III would do better than 150MB/s (unless the internal Sata III bus is slower than an external TB ).

 

[robvas]

Actual testing in this thread:
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1519473/
Real testing; internal Sata III bus should be similar:
GoFlex TB adapter, Seagate Sata3 2TB HDD:
Write: 187 — Read: 183
It would appear that a spinning hard drive that's actually Sata III would do better than 150MB/s (unless the internal Sata III bus is slower than an external TB ).

True - but that's a 7200RPM 3.5" desktop drive. Laptop drives are much slower.

Either way, watch Activity Monitor and keep an eye on MB/s in disk activity when you are loading apps - peak speed is never reached, you're randomly opening files all over the drive which is where the near-zero seek times on a SSD drive shines.