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    M17X R1 HD, SATA 1 or 2?

    Discussion in 'Alienware 17 and M17x' started by eyeglaze, Jan 10, 2012.

  1. eyeglaze

    eyeglaze Notebook Enthusiast

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    Hello all,

    I am trying to figure out if I can upgrade my 250gb HD to a 750gb HD with SATA 2. I don't know if the R1 is SATA 2 ready? I have read the documentation regarding the R1 and they seem to have SATA drives but not sure about SATA 2?

    Thanks everybody
     
  2. DR650SE

    DR650SE The Whiskey Barracuda

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    I'm pretty sure it's SATA 2.
     
  3. katalin_2003

    katalin_2003 NBR Spectre Super Moderator

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    It's SATA II.
     
  4. tyranus7

    tyranus7 Notebook Evangelist

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    What's the main/real difference between Sata I and Sata II?
     
  5. katalin_2003

    katalin_2003 NBR Spectre Super Moderator

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    That would be bandwidth.
    SATA I - 150Mb/s max. per drive.
    SATA II - 300Mb/s max. per drive
     
  6. Tsunade_Hime

    Tsunade_Hime such bacon. wow

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    For most intents and purposes there is hardly a difference. Only when you get into the SSD business will SATA 2 speeds be saturated, as a normal HDD won't even saturate SATA 1.
     
  7. tyranus7

    tyranus7 Notebook Evangelist

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    Yeah I was thinking something like that, my 7200 rpm HDD never goes over 30MB/s reading or writing large files. But is nice to have the chance of having a SSD at full speed, I thought the R1 was Sata I. :D, and I am pretty sure a Sata 2 HDD works on a Sata 1 port.
     
  8. katalin_2003

    katalin_2003 NBR Spectre Super Moderator

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    It does, but you may get IO errors if you don't limit the data transfer on the drive from 3Gb/s (SATA II) to 1,5Gb/s (SATA I).

    You just have to short pin 1 and 2