Problem deciding Gbs setting on HDD

ICIT2LOL · 25 May 2012

Have an A8M2N-LA (NodusM) board and I cannot after Googling everything including the HP and Asus site find out if this board supports 3Gbs.

It states in the specs Each connector supports 1 serial ATA-150 disk drive but I have looked to see what exactly this means too and am getting nowhere.

Can someone please advise me on what I should be looking for? as I said the sites are so ambiguous and I just ant to get on with it.

The drive I am installing is currently jumpered to 1.5GBs and I am wondering if I should just jumper it to 3Gbs and hope i is back compatible if wrong.

alphanumeric · 25 May 2012

SATA revision 1.0 (SATA 1.5 Gbit/s) is SATA-150 (150 MB/s)
SATA revision 2.0 (SATA 3.0 Gbit/s) is SATA-300 (300 MB/s)
As far as I know SATA 2 drives are backward compatible with a SATA 1 interface. If you connect a SATA-300 drive to your motherboard it will only run at SATA-150 speeds. Switching the jumper to 3 Gb/s won't make it run any faster. The bottle neck is the motherboard SATA 1 port.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_ATA

ICIT2LOL · 25 May 2012

Thanks Alpha yeah mate I did read that Wiki thing and being a bit befuddled by some of this stuff so I posted here.

Anyway you have explained it in two lines where several Google's and searches of the HP site - hopelessly inadequate for what I wanted to know.

I really appreciate the help mate - as a matter of interest I ran it as 3Gbs and no problems - did have to update the on board graphics Nvidia driver for 64bit operation but anyway everything is running real sweet.

alphanumeric · 26 May 2012

I wouldn't rush out to buy a motherboard with SATA 2 or even SATA 3 ports either. Unless the SATA drive is an SSD, you won't get those speeds anyway. Most mechanical drives with platters in them are lucky to just reach SATA 1 speeds. I get 124.6 burst and 116.1 sustained, thats IDE speeds. My drive and motherboard are SATA 2 - 3G.

essenbe · 26 May 2012

That's very true. Just to show you, here is a WD Cavier Black sata 3 drive connected to a sata 3 port. It won't break sata 1 speeds.

Problem deciding Gbs setting on HDD-wd-1002faex.png

alphanumeric · 26 May 2012

It gets even worse with 5400 RPM laptop drives. The density of what can be stored on the platters has gone up but the disk still spins at 7200 RPM and the heads will only move so fast. It's the same old hardware you find in an IDE drive with a new interface. Just keep in mind that the advertised speed of the BUS is the theoretical max it could do. You have to read the fine print in the drives specs for its true throughput.

ICIT2LOL · 26 May 2012

Thanks again I guess as it is performing ok anyway is the main deal really as I done this machine up for someone who has been at rock bottom and cannot afford a new or second hand one and just needs a break.

It is one I used to use as my tester, and I don't think she will be doing anything spectacular with it yet.

My main gripe is that the HP site was just pretty near useless for drivers, board info and such.

essenbe · 26 May 2012

Mighty nice of you, John. Good job.

ICIT2LOL · 26 May 2012

essenbe said:

Mighty nice of you, John. Good job.

No it's no problem mate I got the thing for $20 from the recycle centre - cleaned it up renovated just about everything and added a few bits like a better processor and more RAM then used it for about six months until I was given a slightly larger one with an Intel core.
But I would have given it to her anyway as I have 5 machines at my disposal oh and the ones filling the hallway waiting LOL!!

She's had a rough trot one way or another so win win eh?