I want to increase the lifespan of my laptop

Hi, I have an Acer Aspire v3-571, just over 2 years old. I want to replace the hard drive with a SSD but I'm not sure what SATA connection my laptop uses, so not sure if it's worth waiting.

So does anyone know if my V3-571 has a SATA II or SATA III connection? And if it is SATA II, is this a big deal or should I still get a SATA III SSD? (will I notice much real world difference?)

Thanks!

 

cjbeech, all SATA2 SSDs are outdated, get SATA3 SSD. Connection speed doesn't matter much, you won't notice the difference in everyday use.

 

SATA 3 is backwards compatible: The drive and the computer will negotiate the fastest speed supported by both ends of the interface.

That said, an old notebook (most likely from the SATA 1 era) might struggle to recognise a recent SSD if the BIOS doesn't allow enough time during the initial hardware check for the negotiation to be carried out.

John

 

Hi John, I know SATA III is backward compatible so would be fine in a SATA II port. However, I'm not sure if my laptop has a SATA II or SATA III port and if I would notice any difference between the two anyway in day to day use?

 

The physical connection is the same. If it's from 2013, it's likely SATA 3. In all honestly, unless you move files 24/7, the .1 ms access speed of most SSDs will suffice (there will be no difference between most SSDs).

If your laptop is SATA 2 and you put in a SATA 3 SSD, it will run at SATA 2 speeds (300 mb/sec). If you put in a SATA 3 SSD into a SATA 2 laptop, it will run at SATA 2 speeds. Basically the bottleneck can be the system's SATA controller or the SSD depending on what you get. The actual real world difference is minimal unless you copy a TON of data.

 

Having used SATA2 SSD's in SATA2 and SATA3 platforms and also SATA3 and SATA2 SSD's in SATA2 platforms, I can state the following:

The real world difference between SATA2 and SATA3 SSD's is noticeable in any system. Worth buying the latest/largest capacity and ~30% OP'd 2.5" SSD you can, and then installing the latest stable O/S at that time (Win10...), ime.

Granted, just moving to an SSD is the best and biggest jump from a HDD. But from there, settling for a half dozen year old tech is not the best use of your time to install and get the system going with the new drive. And a clean install is not optional if you want the best out of your old system. Also, maxing out the RAM prior to installing a new O/S on a new SSD is also the best way to do this once and just use this system for as long as it is practical. With an i5 SNB or higher and 8GB RAM or more, this could well be into the next decade, with a little occasional TLC.

Good luck.

 

Sometimes the age of the machine, being SATA 2 cannot be helped. Sure if you have a SATA 3 machine, you would obviously buy a SATA 3 SSD, as that's pretty much what is only sold these days. But any upgrade from a platter drive to an SSD is a massive upgrade, I don't even price out machines these days without factoring in the cost of an SSD. Even just multi-tasking, all my machines with 8 GB have all been upgraded to 16 GB as I make my pagefile extremely small due to it chewing up space on my SSD, and 8 GB honestly doesn't suffice doing light gaming, and having ALOT of tabs in Firefox.

 

We shouldn't forget that the improvement in the average SSD's random read / write performance including queued reads / writes has improved over the years and may, depending on the usage pattern, affect performance more than the sequential reads / writes.

I would also expect that any SATA 2 SSDs currently on sale are either used or more expensive than the recent SATA 3 SSDs. People with old stock are often reluctant to sufficiently mark down what was a high price to make the old SSDs attractive on price. Instead, they rely on people who want like-for-like replacement of an old one that has died being willing to pay the premium over the current drives.

John