Displaying What Sata Port Versions Are Available On Your Motherboard

[miketurn1234]

Does anyone know if there is a "simple" way within Windows 7 to tell you what SATA port versions you have on your desktop or laptop motherboards? Especially labtop motherboards which are a little more difficult to find specs on, making finding out what hard drive and DVD drive SATA port versions are used.

I have read quite a bit about this and find it odd that something like getting this information is so difficult.
I have seen so many things where it seems that it shows too much information about your system, yet something as simple as showing what SATA port version is used, seems to not be so easy.

I would rather not have to download a 200mb program and install it, just to find out something basic like this.

Thank You

 

[Megahertz07]

Try this HWiNFO - Download
It's a portable version so you don't have to install. Just extract and run.

 

[TechnoMage2016]

Nice little program, but it never did specify what SATA port was actually on the motherboard.

I just happen to know it's a SATA 1 port. My SanDisk Dashboard tells me that i have a SATA III SSD drive on a SATA I port. It suggests that for better performance I move the drive to a SATA III port.

rofl If only I had one, I'd move to it.

Thanks again,

 

[miketurn1234]

Megahertz07
Thank you for your response, funny that you mentioned this because I had it on my hard drive waiting to be tested, when I typed this post.
I tried it out last night, it is a pretty cool program, amazing the amount of information it generates.
Just like everything else it seemingly has lead me to more research / questions.

I am trying to find out the speed of the SATA port that my labtop DVD drive plugs into, turns out HWINFO shows that it is not a SATA port after all, it is something called ATAPI which I am now currently trying to learn more about, apparently I have a slimline ATAPI connection. I seem to be able to find a lot of info about its history and opinions about it but have not found any exact answers of how fast the port transfers at.

If it is similar to a PATA port then I have read that it transfers at 133Mbps which is close to about what SATA I (1.5Gbps) transfers at which is I believe is 150Mbps (obviously these speeds are not actually what they achieve in real life settings which adds to the confusion)

Odd though that Windows 7 would not tell you port information in the device manager, seems it should be something Windows 7 would know/share.

Anyways, thank you again very much for your response.

 

[miketurn1234]

technomage
Ahh you snuck a response in between mine, so I didn't respond to you.
Thank you for your response, that is the reason why I created this forum post, even though I had HWInfo on my hard drive, it is because I have heard some mention some funny business when it comes to sata style ports. Also I am not sure if I read this about a different program or if it was about HWInfo, but I also read somewhere that it will display the spec of the hardware itself, not the port, so if you have a SATA I port with a SATA II hard drive installed, it will say you have a SATA II port.
So I am still a little unsure about the ATAPI reading.
Thank You

 

[Megahertz07]

In fact windows has the system information (%windir%\system32\msinfo32.exe).
What information you want to know from the ODD drive?
As Optical disks has low read speeds, some ODD may have the communications by serial devices (USB or Com)

 

[RoasterMen]

Laptops often come with two to three SATA ports. One for ODD and the other two for HDDs or SSDs. Laptops may also come with M.2 or mSATA.

 

[miketurn1234]

I was able to find a solution elsewhere using the program HWInfo.

I will share what I have found just in case anyone else is interested.

On the main screen on HWInfo you will see in the bottom left hand corner the specs on the devices that are plugged into your system. To get the actual motherboard port information go to the following location in the left spec tree....

Expand the "BUS>PCI BUS #0" item from the list
Then select "SATA AHCI Controller Devices

Hope this will help someone in the future.