TR Forums

Is a mechanical HDD fast enough to benefit from SATA 6Gb/s?

I got a new HDD (WD2002FAEX 2TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb) but I only have 1 port open on my mobo and it's SATA 3Gb/s.
I could swap stuff around, connect the new HDD to one of the Marvel ports (SATA 6Gb/s). Is it worth it?

Thanks you guys.

This may be of help;

http://techreport.com/articles.x/18467/3

Short answer: No, probably not.

Long answer: 3Gb/s is faster than the sustained transfer speed of a mechanical hard drive, so it shouldn't be a bottleneck. A 6GB/s interface would allow you to do burst transfers from/to the drive's internal cache more efficiently, and may provide a small benefit on certain workloads. But modern OSes do a lot of caching of their own, making peak burst transfer rates to/from the drive's cache less important (as long as the interface is faster than the drive's sustained transfer speed).

What do you have connected to the Sata3 ports now? If you have something that's only Sata2 plugged into a Sata3 port, I'd swap around anyways, even though as the others said you're unlikely to gain any noticeable benefit. That's more to satisfy my OCD than anything else, though.

Thanks for the replies you guys -

On the 2 Marvell SATA 6Gb/s ports I've got my SSD boot drive and a brand new Blu-Ray burner, which I installed last night.

I hesitate to put the new WD drive on the Marvell port because these Marvell drivers caused me hours of frustration (constant BSOD till I switched to the MSAHCI driver). The trouble is I don't remember how I did it - it was 2 years ago - how I finally got the port to use the MSAHCI driver. That's why I figure I'll just use an Intel port.

But I've got a (un?)healthy touch of ACD too so I'd like to put this new SATA 6Gb/s drive on a SATA 6Gb/s port.... if only I could be sure the Marvell drivers won't rear their ugly head...

Thanks again!

Move the blu-ray burner to another port, it doesn't need to be on the sata6. It won't gain anything from it, it's too slow due to the mechanical nature of the burner.

hp9000 wrote:

Move the blu-ray burner to another port, it doesn't need to be on the sata6. It won't gain anything from it, it's too slow due to the mechanical nature of the burner.

thanks but i know that part - what i don't know is whether the new HDD will give me trouble on the Marvell port.

just brew it! wrote:

Short answer: No, probably not.

A 6GB/s interface would allow you to do burst transfers from/to the drive's internal cache more efficiently, and may provide a small benefit on certain workloads.

Thanks JBI - I'm curious, "certain workloads" - does that include video editing? Specifically - for Premiere Pro or Final Cut cache / preview files? Or the disc I write to in the final render?

I guess not; the way I understand video editing it's mostly about sustained transfers and rarely (if ever) about burst activity. Is that right?

btw I think I'll move the Blu-Ray burner and put this new disc on the SATA 6Gb/s port...see what happens. I think (i hope) I've rid myself of the Marvell drivers problem once and for all...

thanks again all!

Yeah, video editing is going to tend to do a lot of large streaming transfers. The bottleneck will be the sustained transfer rate of the drive, not the peak transfer rate of the interface.

Thanks JBI, that's what I thought. I appreciate your replies.

I put the new HDD on the SATA 6Gb/s port (Marvell) - no problem installing, copying files now.

Thanks again for your help everyone!