Second SATA III Internal Notebook Drive is Running at SATA II Transfer Speed

[FreedomMike]

Question: Why does the upgraded Samsung SSD drive have full SATA III capability while the second internal notebook SATA III drive steps-down to a SATA II transfer rate? It is the same controller and RAID configuration (supporting AHCI), so why shouldn’t the motherboard both recognize and run the data storage drive as a SATA III?

Samsung SSD 850 PRO 256G – boot drive

Max. Transfer Mode  SATA III 6.0Gb/s

Used Transfer Mode   SATA III 6.0Gb/s

Seagate ST1000LM035-1RK172 – data storage drive

Max. Transfer Mode  SATA III 6.0Gb/s

Used Transfer Mode   SATA II 3.0Gb/s

HP Notebook Information:

HP Pavilion dv7t-7000 CTO Entertainment Notebook PC

Product Number - A5F92AV

System Summary:

Operating System

            Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit SP1

CPU

            Intel Core i7 3820QM @ 2.70GHz    52 °C

            Ivy Bridge 22nm Technology

RAM

            16.0GB Dual-Channel DDR3 @ 798MHz (11-11-11-28)

Motherboard

            Hewlett-Packard 181F (U3E1)

Graphics

            Generic PnP Monitor (1920x1080@60Hz)

            Intel HD Graphics 4000 (HP)

            2048MB NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M (HP)   46 °C

            ForceWare version: 295.55

            SLI Disabled

Storage

            238GB Samsung SSD 850 PRO 256G (SSD) 42 °C

            931GB Seagate ST1000LM035-1RK172 (SATA)     35 °C

Optical Drives

            hp BD MLT UJ260

Audio

            IDT High Definition Audio CODEC

[banhien]

Hi,

From the following link

    http://www.disctech.com/Seagate-ST1000LM035-1TB-SATA-Hard-Drive

The drive itself uses SATA II (or SATA 300) interface

Capacity: 1TB

Speed: 5,400RPM

Interface Types: SATA

Form Factor: 2.5inx7mm Fits All laptops

Sector Size: 512 / 512e

Sustained Throughput: 140 MB/s

Electrical Interface: SATA 300 - 3.0Gbps

On-Board Cache: 128MB

Regards.

[FreedomMike]

Banhien,

Thanks for the quick response.

Based on a Piriform Speccy diagnostic as listed in my original posting, the drive is a 6.0Gb/s SATA III with a “…used transfer mode…” of 3.0Gb/s, which is a SATA II rate. Please see the links below that confirm my Seagate drive specifications as a SATA III with 6.0 Gb/s. The last web link is directly from Seagate’s website and confirms the SATA III specifications for my drive. Thus, it is verified that the Seagate drive in my notebook is a SATA III with 128MB of cache; the only question is why has it stepped down to a SATA II?

Newegg: https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822178875

Amazon: https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B01C4W29XC/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Seagate Specifications Sheet: http://www.seagate.com/www-content/datasheets/pdfs/mobile-hddDS1861-2-1603-en_US.pdf

[FreedomMike]

Replaced previously installed Seagate drive with a upgrade to Seagate FireCuda Gaming SSHD 1TB; however, the motherboard still forces a step-down from SATA III to SATA II specifications. I'm wondering if HP has specifications available for my dvt-7000 motherboard and/or if there is a chance that it can be reconfigured to support a second drive as a SATA III. See new Piriform Speccy diagnostic report on SSHD as listed below.

ST1000LX015-1U7172
Manufacturer Seagate
Heads 16
Cylinders 121,601
Tracks 31,008,255
Sectors 1,953,520,065
SATA type SATA-III 6.0Gb/s
Device type Fixed
ATA Standard ACS3
Serial Number WES3TN4K
Firmware Version Number SDM1
LBA Size 48-bit LBA
Power On Count 11 times
Power On Time 0.9 days
Speed 5400 RPM
Features S.M.A.R.T., APM, NCQ
Max. Transfer Mode SATA III 6.0Gb/s
Used Transfer Mode SATA II 3.0Gb/s
Interface SATA
Capacity 931 GB
Real size 1,000,204,886,016 bytes
RAID Type None

Any direction or thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

[FreedomMike · Accepted solution]

Product specifications not listed on the web by HP include the following.

“Product Specs are not available on the web if:

• The computer was special ordered from HP, or only a few computers were built with a custom hardware configuration, a spec sheet is not available.
• The Model Number ends with CTO (Custom To Order); example (Envy 17t-1000 CTO, Mini CQ10-100 CTO, TouchSmart tm2t-1000 CTO, Pavilion tx2000z CTO).” (see link below)

https://support.hp.com/us-en/product/hp-pavilion-dv7-7000-entertainment-notebook-pc-series/5226224/m...

Despite the above disclaimer by HP. You can locate the part listing through HP PartSurfer: http://partsurfer.hp.com/search.aspx

Located dv7t-7000 part list through HP part surfer product specification search function (see link below): http://partsurfer.hp.com/Search.aspx?searchText=2CE307148S

No part number for the motherboard is listed in the dv7t-7000 part list. After conducting a further search on the web, the closest motherboard part number is 682040-001. Once again, I cannot find a website that lists the specifications for the SATA drive connectors.

Based on the above, this is a dead-end request. Despite the SATA III to SATA II step-down, the SSHD in the second drive bay still provides superior performance to the previous 7200RPM drive.

Forum question self answered.