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    Laptop SATA 2.0 support

    Discussion in 'Hardware Components and Aftermarket Upgrades' started by ntheo, Jul 24, 2009.

  1. ntheo

    ntheo Notebook Consultant

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    So I have a HP dv9429us with a dual hard drive. Both are 5400rpm but one is 80gb and the other is 120gb supporting SATA 1.0(1.5Gb/sec)

    I'm not sure about other people but when I have two drives with both the same RPM but different capacity, I prefer the smaller drive to be where my OS/programs resides and the larger to be a backup/data one.
    HP reversed it so I'm planning on imaging my drive and doing the swap. The plus side is that the smaller drive actually has slightly faster read/write times than the bigger drive so I might notice a very slight increase in performance.

    Using the Crystal Disk Info program on this forum, I've noticed that my drives support SATA 1.0.

    My question is does my laptop support SATA 2.0? Is there a program or something that I can do to find out or would I have to buy a SATA 2.0 hard drive and plug it in to find out if it works at SATA 2.0 or clocks down to SATA 1.0 because of hardware limitations?

    Thanks for everything!
     
    ntheo, Jul 24, 2009
    #1
  2. John Ratsey

    John Ratsey Moderately inquisitive Super Moderator

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    SATA 2.0 doesn't provide any noticeable performance boost with the current 2.5" HDDs. It only speeds up the transfer of the small amount of data in the cache. To find out whether your hardware supports SATA 2 you will need to identify the chipset and research the specifications.

    You should not encounter compatibility problems with connecting SATA 2 HDD to SATA 1 computer or vice-versa, but a few people have encountered such problems. To be on the safe side you could buy a model of HDD which has support for a jumper which forces it to SATA 1 just in case the chipset on the computer is confused by a SATA 2 HDD. You would need to research the installation guides to identify which HDDs have this option.

    John
     
    John Ratsey, Jul 24, 2009
    #2