Thinkpads Forum

Hi, I want to replace my original hdd in my T60p with ssd. I heard that hdds are limited by so called "sata cap" is it the same with ssd's?
Thanks!
davepol

Yes. The cap is not related to the disk, but to the chipset. T60p southbridge (ICH7-M), despite formally supporting SATA-300 is limited to SATA-150 (150MB/s) speeds.

While I have yet to witness a mechanical drive that can reach such speeds anyways (at least sustained over time), some SSDs can in some cases surpass 150MB/s, and they will be somewhat slowed down by the chipset.

In real world usage, the slowdown relative to a full SATA-300 controller should be marginal, when compared to the benefits of moving from HDD to SSD, even at SATA-150 speeds.

Thanks!

dr_st wrote:In real world usage, the slowdown relative to a full SATA-300 controller should be marginal, when compared to the benefits of moving from HDD to SSD, even at SATA-150 speeds.

I second this.

Practically speaking, the speed cap just won't matter. The only way that it would matter would be if your workload consisted of massive amounts of sequential accesses. Nearly all desktop workloads consist of small random reads/writes -- and none of the drives that you're considering will have their small random read/write performance impacted by the SATA speed cap.

In short, don't worry about the cap when choosing a drive: the sequential numbers are mostly just marketing hype, and the important stats won't be affected.