Speed difference between a SATA II & SATA III mechanical hard drive?

[Moontrash]

I know that SATA III (6gbps) speed is mainly seen in SSD drives but when hooked up to a SATA III motherboard, is there any speed difference when a SATA II and SATA III mechanical hard drive hooked up? or is the SATA III speed difference just seen in SSD drives?

[LIGHTNING UK!]

or is the SATA III speed difference just seen in SSD drives?

Yes

Most mechanical hdds wouldn't even swamp SATA I. (*except when the data is being read from / written to the cache)

[jman98]

SATA II runs at 3 Gbps. It is possible to find SATA III hard drives. I've got 2 of them. Newegg has plenty. Any SATA III motherboard not only will support SATA II devices at SATA II speeds but it probably also has specific SATA II connectors. I can't say I've done an exhaustive search, but it seems to me that most SSDs are now SATA III and it's actually harder to find SATA II SSDs. There's nothing wrong per se with you saying "mechanical hard drive" but technically speaking "hard drive" does NOT refer to SSD so it's a bit redundant to say that. We had a thread last week where some of our members were willingly painting themselves into corners and going to ridiculous lengths in trying to describe what you call a "mechanical hard drive" because they had decided that "hard drive" could describe SSDs too and they were finding it almost impossible to describe non-SSD drives as a result, but in fact "hard drive" only refers to mechanical drives and not SSD technology. SSDs are SSDs. Hard drives are hard drives. They are different from each other.

I don't know if this is still true, but various people in recent years have complained about DVD and BD burners running at SATA III having issues and a year ago it was generally accepted that you should probably leave burners at SATA II speeds (most burners last year were just SATA II burners anyway, but I've had no reason to check recently). Having said that I am sure that we will now have posts from people reporting no issues with running burners at SATA III speeds. All I can tell you is that I only have SATA II burners so maybe things are different now.

[jman98]

I'm not saying it's cheap, but here's an example of a SATA III 2 TB hard drive.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148619

[jagabo]

is there any speed difference when a SATA II and SATA III mechanical hard drive hooked up?

No. The drives can only read/write ~50 to 200 MB/s from/to the platters. SATA II can sustain over 300 MB/s.

[Moontrash]

thanks for the input guys.

I wonder why they even put out SATA III mechanical drives. If the speed is about the same as SATA II it seems it isn't necessary.

I call em mechanical drives cause I knew if I didn't separate it from SSD some would tie them in together. It was either mechanical or "regular" or "platter" hard drive.

I personally have an SATA III SSD with a SATA III MB and the speeds are very good. I also have 1 SATA III mechanical drive and it never did seem to be any faster or slower than the abundance of SATA II drives I have. They both read and write at pretty similiar speeds. Mostly around 80 - 100mb reads and 80 to 100mb writes. Never fails. On an SATA II or III MB...no difference.

Seems almost like a gimmick to badge a mechanical drive with SATA III if it won't ever get 6gbps speeds.

BTW, I did check around online and I saw nowhere any speed tests that I could see for myself. Just showed tests between mechanical drives and SSD's. I thought maybe I was missing something with the difference so I thought I'd ask in here.

[jagabo]

I personally have an SATA III SSD with a SATA III MB and the speeds are very good.

The faster transfer rate of SATA III can help with the fastest SSDs. But the biggest speedup with SSD comes from the reduced seek time, not the raw transfer rate.

Seems almost like a gimmick to badge a mechanical drive with SATA III if it won't ever get 6gbps speeds.

It's just so they can charge more to people who don't understand the issues.

[Moontrash]

It's just so they can charge more to people who don't understand the issues.

That's why I started the thread. I had no clue lol

[jagabo]

It's also a checkmark item so that the customer doesn't buy your competitor's drive instead of yours.