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SATA Speeds

thatoneguy82

thatoneguy82

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Jul 23, 2008
1,895
2
Beach Cities, CA
I have the 2010 Macbook Pro (MacBook Pro 6,1). I'm about to pull the trigger on the dual disk drive upgrade. I'll be moving my current HDD to the optibay and the drive is SATAII. I'm unsure of which SSD to purchase. The SATA II and SATA III for 128gb and 120gb is roughly around the same price. But, I want to make sure it will be compatible for my computer. If it won't be able to utilize the SATA III, then obviously I won't purchase.

Thanks so much.
 
According to everymac, your MBP has SATA II. SATA is backwards compatible so a SATA III drive will work with a SATA II port, but it will run at SATA II speeds. Depending on the exact SSD, SATA II can hold it back, so I would look to get a SATA III SSD anyway. That is if you're planning on upgrading the MBP some time soon in the future and keeping the drive.

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jav6454 said:
Get a SATA II drive, the SATA III drives are giving some Macs problems.
Click to expand...

It seems to be a hit and miss issue more related to the manufacturer and SSD controller, rather than a SATA II vs SATA III issue.
 
Great. Thanks for the quick replies.

The SATAII drive I am planning on get is the Intel 320 120gb and the SATAIII is the Crucial M4 128gb. Is there anything better?
 
Intel 320 would also be my SATA II choice. Another SATA III option would be the Samsung 830.

I actually use a Vertex 3 pro and despite the many horror stories, it seems to be working well. The thing is though, unless you're doing 25 things at once and working on 2 GBs files in photoshop at the same as time as editing 4K movies you won't really notice the difference between a "slow" SSD and a "fast" SSD.

Check out HH's guide at the top and here are some comparisons that I did
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1293809/
 
thatoneguy82 said:
I have the 2010 Macbook Pro (MacBook Pro 6,1). I'm about to pull the trigger on the dual disk drive upgrade. I'll be moving my current HDD to the optibay and the drive is SATAII. I'm unsure of which SSD to purchase. The SATA II and SATA III for 128gb and 120gb is roughly around the same price. But, I want to make sure it will be compatible for my computer. If it won't be able to utilize the SATA III, then obviously I won't purchase.

Thanks so much.
Click to expand...

Run the utility System Information and select Serial-ATA and look at "link speed".
 
VMMan said:
Run the utility System Information and select Serial-ATA and look at "link speed".
Click to expand...

That's where I actually first went. But, I thought it was related to the current drive attached to it which was a SATAII drive. I didn't know if that was the maximum it can support.
 
thatoneguy82 said:
That's where I actually first went. But, I thought it was related to the current drive attached to it which was a SATAII drive. I didn't know if that was the maximum it can support.
Click to expand...

The current drive info is under Negotiated Link Speed
 
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