What is SATA compatability, II or III or both?
Will my MacBook Pro accept a SATA III SSD or does it need to be SATA II compatible or less?
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The SATA standart should be backward compatible. Check what your MBP takes but it should be SATA 3, so could take either.
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Ah! The glass half full or half empty argument. Sadly its not that simple!
The SATA standard was written so an older drive could be used in a newer system So a SATA III (6.0 Gb/s) system can use a SATA II (3.0 Gb/s) drive! The reasoning was which was cheaper back in the day HDD's where very expensive! So thats what drove the standard.
Now when SATA III drives came out many people had problems! As unlike what the standards group was expecting, the reverse happened! People were installing bigger drives in older systems. Many returned the new drives complaining it wasn't working in their older system reliably! The problem, SATA III drives don't play nice in older SATA II systems.
The HDD makers realized they had a problem so they went back to the labs and created a new SATA interface circuit for their HDD's leveraging what Ethernet did creating a sensing circuit to discover what the system needed we call this Auto sense Vs fixed speed. These special drives ARE downward compatible! Unlike a fixed speed drive which is not!
You need to review the given drives spec sheet does it state it or not?
Which of these drives offer auto sense?
2.5" Seagate FireCuda SSHD spec sheet
3.5" Seagate FireCuda SSHD spec sheet
Note: the line: SATA Transfer Rates Supported (Gb/s) - 6.0/3.0/1.5
The 3.5" drive is an Auto sense drive, the 2.5 is a Fixed SATA III drive! The older version of the 2.5" was an auto sense so you need to be careful!
Many of the drive makers are dropping auto sense technology so their drives can be be more competitive. Don't forget most people today have newer SATA III systems or newer PCIe/NVMe blade SSD's.
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It will work with SATA III..... , it's backwards compatible if your computer doesn't have a SATA III controller, just operate at sata II speed...... if a SATA III drive your looking at costs more no benefit for using a SATA III drive if it costs more and your machine has no SATA III controller...... I would recommend a intel brand, like the Intel 320 series, esp. since i know they work well with OSX and have not heard of anyone having a major problem with them, even thou it's not part of the question thought i would mention it...Not sure which drive you are looking at... and intels are a bit more expensive then some of the other ones out there.
( the read/write/internal IO speed of an SSD is what will make it nice and fast).
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ahhhh, i got beat to answer first......... :-)
Thanks to both of you for the reply. I was looking at a Samsung SSD. All the new ones are SATA III and don't claim to be backwards compatible like other brands. I was disappointed that Apple doesn't spelll this out, although I guess they are not excited about folks putting non Apple in their boxes.
Thanks again. I'll take a look at the Intel 320.
They say on the memo that it needs a SATA III controller. read on down.
