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zoran

macrumors 601
Original poster
Jun 30, 2005
4,881
136
Does anyone know what type of HD is installed on my old MBP (A1260). Is it a sata2? someone help me with its specs, its broken and i need to replace it!
 
Last edited:
You MBP uses a standard SATA 2.5" inch 5400 RPM drive. It is SATA I (1.5Gbps), but don't worry about that as SATA is backwards compatible, so a newer SATA II or III drive would work.
 
saturating?

Using all of the bandwidth of the connection.
E.g hard drive speeds are usually 40-70 Mb/s

Sata I max speed is 150 Mb/s if I remember right. So there is no way your hard drive can use all the speed available. A SSD on the other hand, could very well saturate (use all the speed) of a Sata I connection.
 
saturating?

I think his point was no hard drive you could buy for your notebook has a transfer rate that would exceed SATA I capacity anyway. There are some high end desktop hard drives that could though.

Bottom line is just get whatever SATA laptop hard drive you find on sale at the capacity you need and it will work.
 
I think his point was no hard drive you could buy for your notebook has a transfer rate that would exceed SATA I capacity anyway. There are some high end desktop hard drives that could though.

Bottom line is just get whatever SATA laptop hard drive you find on sale at the capacity you need and it will work.

True. However, this being a laptop, nothing mechanical that we know off can saturate it.

Using all of the bandwidth of the connection.
E.g hard drive speeds are usually 40-70 Mb/s

Sata I max speed is 150 Mb/s if I remember right. So there is no way your hard drive can use all the speed available. A SSD on the other hand, could very well saturate (use all the speed) of a Sata I connection.

Also true.


Which is why,
 
Using all of the bandwidth of the connection.
E.g hard drive speeds are usually 40-70 Mb/s

Sata I max speed is 150 Mb/s if I remember right. So there is no way your hard drive can use all the speed available. A SSD on the other hand, could very well saturate (use all the speed) of a Sata I connection.

Of importance is the use of Mb (Megabit) vs MB (Megabyte). :D SATA-I is 1.5Gb/sec, or 1500Mb/sec, or 150MB/sec. If it were only 150Mb/sec then that would be quite slow.

As for usual hard drive speeds, both my Apple (HDST) 1TB 2.5" HDD and my external USB3.0 4TB drive are capable of over 100MB/sec sustained. The 40-70MB/sec speed you quote hasn't been the case for a long time thanks to improvements in platter density, among other things.

Still slower than SATA-I speed, though. :D
 
Of importance is the use of Mb (Megabit) vs MB (Megabyte). :D SATA-I is 1.5Gb/sec, or 1500Mb/sec, or 150MB/sec. If it were only 150Mb/sec then that would be quite slow.

As for usual hard drive speeds, both my Apple (HDST) 1TB 2.5" HDD and my external USB3.0 4TB drive are capable of over 100MB/sec sustained. The 40-70MB/sec speed you quote hasn't been the case for a long time thanks to improvements in platter density, among other things.

Still slower than SATA-I speed, though. :D

Lol I always forget Mbit vs Mbytes. Reminds me of this

Running blackmagic speed test on my internal I get in the 30-40 MB/s range (with other programs running) on a WD scorpio blue 1TB (with only 100gb remaining). But I have an external USB3 disk I get upwards of 100 MB/s out of. Guess it depends on the drive, as well as probably how much info is on the drive, programs running, etc. But either way, as you said, "normal" (5200 -5600 rpm) drives will likely never hit a Sata I limit.
 
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