SATA III SSD downward compatible?

[Patrixus]

Hello! I have two questions:
1. I have an old motherboard with SATA I slots. Could I mount and SSD SATA III? Is the hard drive downward compatible with SATA I slot? I wouldn't buy an SSD just to find out the answer is "no"...

2. If I will connect an SSD SATA II or III (via an adapter) to the IDE slot, is there a max limit of what the motherboard can see? (I heard the SSD should be max 250 GB or max 500GB)

Thank you!

[shadowbyte]

1. It should work. I have an old Macbook from 2007 w/ sata 1, and people have put all sorts of SATA 3 ssd's in there with no issues.

2. no idea

[Mark77]

With rare exceptions, everything with a SATA port is compatible with everything with a SATA port. 

 

There are some situations that capacity might be de-rated or limited.  But you can definitely use a SATA SSD on a SATA-1 controller.

 

I think the capacity problem arises at ~2TB.  So not an issue for most 'consumer' SSDs as of yet. 

 

 

[VinsinityKT]

Yes but the speed would be limited to the port. Sata 3 lets it max out for most sata ssd.

[HrutkayMods]

ide at max runs at 133 (plus the adapter would cause a bit of speed loss), Sata 1 runs at 150. you'll be losing speed with the adapter also if you only have PCI slots an adapter card can only do Sata 1, if you have PCIE 1.1 slots you should be able to get SATA 2 to work at 300

[Patrixus]

I know exactly the speeds and what I lose. But I am interested only in the specific answers to my questions.... Especially to the second one as long as to the first one I had two answers.

[Patrixus]

4 minutes ago, Mark77 said:

 

I think the capacity problem arises at ~2TB.  So not an issue for most 'consumer' SSDs as of yet. 

 

 

This is only for installing the system - max. 2TB. My question was about the old IDE system with master and slave, primary amd secondary. I heard it could be possible for the motherboard to not "see" a too big SSD.

[TrigrH]

4 minutes ago, Patrixus said:

I know exactly the speeds and what I lose. But I am interested only in the specific answers to my questions.... Especially to the second one as long as to the first one I had two answers.

plug a hdd in and see yourself what shows up, cos there seems to be a lot of variance depending on hardware

[Mark77]

1 minute ago, Patrixus said:

This is only for installing the system - max. 2TB. My question was about the old IDE system with master and slave, primary amd secondary. I heard it could be possible for the motherboard to not "see" a too big SSD.

 

There's nothing unique about a SSD that would cause its integration to fail where a HDD would otherwise work.  Maybe you could borrow a HDD of the size of SSD you're looking to install, and try that. 

[Patrixus]

Just now, Mark77 said:

 

There's nothing unique about a SSD that would cause its integration to fail where a HDD would otherwise work.  Maybe you could borrow a HDD of the size of SSD you're looking to install, and try that. 

I just heard something about different voltage or something... I just don't want to burn something if I connect it just like that.

[Mark77]

4 minutes ago, Patrixus said:

I just heard something about different voltage or something... I just don't want to burn something if I connect it just like that.

Nope, all SATA is fully electrically compatible.  The compatibility that we're perhaps worried about here is logical compatibility.

[Patrixus]

Just now, Mark77 said:

Nope, all SATA is fully electrically compatible.  The compatibility that we're perhaps worried about here is logical compatibility.

Then we can not be sure 100%, but no damage will happen?

[Mark77]

Just now, Patrixus said:

Then we can not be sure 100%, but no damage will happen?

I'm not aware of any instance of a SATA product's design damaging another SATA-compliant product. 

 

There were some instances with SCSI, particularly with "low-voltage differential" and/or "single-ended" setups being incompatible with "differential" SCSI, but those have not been carried over to SATA.  The SATA voltage levels were standardized.

[Patrixus]

Just now, Mark77 said:

I'm not aware of any instance of a SATA product's design damaging another SATA-compliant product. 

 

There were some instances with SCSI, particularly with "low-voltage differential" and/or "single-ended" setups being incompatible with "differential" SCSI, but those have not been carried over to SATA.  The SATA voltage levels were standardized.

Thank you Mark!

[Captain_WD]

On 14.04.2016 г. at 5:59 AM, Patrixus said:

~snip~

Hey there Patrixus

 

My take on this: You shouldn't have problems using any SATA drive on any SATA port with only speed being the limitation. SATAI has a limitation of about 150MB/s. This pretty much renders the SSD choice pointless as regular drives can easily reach those speeds and the performance difference won't be noticeable.

 

Connecting a SSD to is even less logical as speed there would be limited to about 133MB/s. I would rather go for a regular HDD with higher capacity for far less costly price.

 

Captain_WD.

[Mark77]

10 hours ago, Captain_WD said:

Connecting a SSD to is even less logical as speed there would be limited to about 133MB/s. I would rather go for a regular HDD with higher capacity for far less costly price.

The typical workload of a HDD rarely approaches the interface rate on account of most reads not being sequential in nature.

 

SSDs, on typical workloads, blow HDDs away and offer a dramatic and tangible performance improvement for most modern use cases.   Even on older SATA-1 150MBps interfaces.

 

SSDs also offer significant reliability and power consumption advantages versus HDDs.  They are basically the 'go to' upgrade these days for anyone who doesn't already have one in their system.

[Captain_WD]

On 15.04.2016 г. at 1:06 AM, Mark77 said:

~snip~

I would agree with this for the most part besides the reliability issue. It really depends on how you view reliability. In terms of data safety when it comes to external factors such as vibrations, heat and others then yes, SSDs are harder to damage by similar things. On the other hand, though, failures do happen and then SSDs cause the major problems. Retrieving data off of a failed SSD is nearly impossible even for data recovery companies while getting your data back from a failed HDD is far easier. This is why I would always go for a redundant array of HDDs over a single SSD (for the same budget) when it comes to data safety. 

Moreover, SSDs can only last that long without power before data corruption becomes an issue if you happen to leave your computer unused for some time (even though it's unlikely that you won't touch your computer for over an year). 

 

All in all, there are still some pros in using HDDs over SSDs which people should be aware of.

 

Depending on what the computer will be used, OP might not even see a major difference between using a HDD and a SSD in their everyday routine. But I would completely agree that a SSD is always a good upgrade option.

 

Captain_WD.