SATA 3 backwards compatible?

[douglasb]

I'v been considering an ungrade to SSD & Windows 7 for a while now and looking on Scan this morning I found this for £70:

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/120gb...83000-iops-max

I'm very tempted considering the price relative to other drives of similar size/performance, only problem is my motherboard only has SATA 2 (Showing it's age here, it's coming up to it's 4th birthday soon!). Would the drive still be compatible with my motherboard?

I know I wouldn't get the full 500mb/s but I would prefer a SATA 3 for when I eventually upgrade to an i5/7 processor and associated chipset. Evan limited by SATA 2 it would still be a lot faster than my current 2x 500Gb Samsung F1s


Thanks,

Douglas

[IronWarrior]

Yes, SATA 3 works on SATA 2.

Personally, I would avoid that Suckforce SSD at all costs and get the M4 for £18 extra.

Also using a SATA 3 SSD on my SATA 2 motherboard.

[Ferral]

My board is SATA 2 and I have a SATA 3 SSD attached to it, works absolutely fine.

Your transfer rate will be 3Gb instead of the 6Gb that the SATA 3 supports.

[douglasb]

Personally, I would avoid that Suckforce SSD at all costs and get the M4 for £18 extra.

What is your objection with it? Does it use the sandforce controller?
I was leaning away from the Crucial M4 becuase of sandforce and the extra £18, being a student I am permanently skint
Also on hexus' review the M4 didn't come out too well, it's write speeds are much lower than the Sandisk I found and I have been going off their tests to compare performance http://hexus.net/tech/reviews/storag...-240gb/?page=3

[Agent]

douglasb - have a search around the forum, this has been covered loads over the last few weeks (A search for sandforce should do)

In short:

*The headline speeds of the drives only work in certain situations (data is compressible) where other drives hit their maximum speed almost constantly.
*Sandforce based drives have a history of unreliability.
*The Crucial M4 and Samsung 830 are both regarded as reliable drives.
*If you get close to filling a Sandforce based drive, you can get serious issues where only a reformat will fix them.
*In real world usage, their is very little between Sandforce and other drives like above, going both ways on different tests.

[IronWarrior]

Agent, when you say when you get closed to filling an Sandforce based drive, can you give an example how many GB's that is? Currently I have 11GB's left on mine.

douglasb, I brought a Hyper X in the big sale that Scan did few weeks ago, but had a lot of booting trouble with it, I installed my OS more times in one week then I have done over a years time...

[kalniel]

Agent, when you say when you get closed to filling an Sandforce based drive, can you give an example how many GB's that is? Currently I have 11GB's left on mine.

It depends on the type of data you have, and how much spare space the drive has reserved that you can't see. If you have filled the drive with uncompressable random data (movies for eg.) and yours is a sata 3 sandforce drive with slightly larger capacity than its peers then I would consider leaving a bit more space.

[IronWarrior]

It depends on the type of data you have, and how much spare space the drive has reserved that you can't see. If you have filled the drive with uncompressable random data (movies for eg.) and yours is a sata 3 sandforce drive with slightly larger capacity than its peers then I would consider leaving a bit more space.

That sucks, I guess I will have to select a game to uninstall.

[douglasb]

I had had a search and had seen the Samsung 830 and was tempted by it from what everyone else has said about it, I couldn't find a reason why I should spend £10 more for it than the Sandisk I listed earlier though so I suppose that should have been my question

Thanks