Recommendations for a good solution: SATA II to SATA III

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Howdy. I have a Dell T3500 with an X58 MoBo. I'm stuck with USB 2.0, and SATA II.

The USB, even though I have an external HDD attached, isn't really a big deal. But I'd really like to find a good solution for the SATA II thing. I have two SATA III SSDs, and a SATA III HDD. Yes, I know they work fine with SATA II.

I would just like to be able to use them at SATA III specs.

Any ideas?


Thanks.

W
 
I just thought that I could get a 4X to SATA III card, with like 4 SATA connectors. But yeah, I would have to be able to boot from it.
 
I would really appreciate some help here. I can't afford to build a new system, no upgrading what I have is my only option.

Thanks, guys.

Wyo
 
With respect to the user 'experience', SATA III doesn't make any difference; it's only twice as fast in terms of bandwidth. What makes SSDs faster is their access times, which are the same for II and III.

Basically, don't worry about it.
 
I use SATA SSDs on an older system with SATA II, it's fine.

Thought about going the PCIe SSD route, but booting is an issue. I think most of them require EFI (I know Intel's do). Reviews are usually silent about booting.
 
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Post #8 pretty much nailed it. Going with SSD you have already improved your experience greatly and any other efforts are unlikely to be perceivable.

The X58 being a 10 year old platform designed in a 3gb/s (sata2) era, it just does not have the bandwidth to make full use of SATA 3.

One place I do see room for improvement is the external HDD. Utilizing the rear eSATA connector on your T3500 will give much better transfer speeds than USB2.
 
No. It was overkill on my part. You are quite right.
 
One place I do see room for improvement is the external HDD. Utilizing the rear eSATA connector on your T3500 will give much better transfer speeds than USB2.

Ok, but my external WD 3TB doesn't have eSATA. It's quite possible that I don't know enough, but it only has a USB port. It's rated at USB3, that's why I was wondering if a USB3 card would be a good investment.
 
Just to re-iterate, you won't notice the sata 3 speed increase. SSDs make a huge difference due to low latency and how fast they are able to access individual files for the OS :)

A USB 3.1 card would be a good investment - they are cheap, and will make a huge difference on that external drive.
 
A USB 3.1 card would be a good investment - they are cheap, and will make a huge difference on that external drive.

Thanks! Know anybody with a cheap USB 3.1 card for sale?
 
As for data transfer rates, USB3 card will give small speed increase at best. Again, the older architecture of the board is the limitation here. Bandwidth between PCI slots and I/O controller is rated at 500mb/s. Not much above USB2 speeds. Conversely, buying an external enclosure with eSATA capability will bring you in line with SATA2 standards - 3gb/s. See Intel X58 diagram below:

https://www.intel.com/Assets/PDF/prodbrief/x58-product-brief.pdf

If the external storage is just for back up, speed is probably not a paramount concern anyway.

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That said, there are aftermarket X58 boards (Gigabyte come to mind) with SATA3 and USB3 capability. Our T3500 are not among them, sadly.
 

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With respect to the user 'experience', SATA III doesn't make any difference; it's only twice as fast in terms of bandwidth. What makes SSDs faster is their access times, which are the same for II and III.

Basically, don't worry about it.
This is true. Especially for an older system.

Wasted effort. Put that money toward a usb 3.0 card.
 
This is true. Especially for an older system.

Wasted effort. Put that money toward a usb 3.0 card.
Let's bear in mind the OP's primary goal is speed - wants faster than SATA2. Can say from personal experience working with these T3500 that an expansion card does give benefit of Asynchronous transfer feature essential for USB3 devices like VR to work. Speed and bandwidth are another matter.
 
I had a Dell T5400 Workstation that was SATA II only. I did look at running my SSDs through a PCI-e card (make sure it's at least a x4 one) but then I realised that that would add as many seconds to the boot time negating the benefit of going to SATAIII in the first place.

Those extra bootable cards always seem messy to me that way. Why they cannot have a switch to make them 'silent' after setup...

I kept it as is in the end, as performance was still near instant while in Windows.

I did add a USB3. card however and that was great.
 
As for data transfer rates, USB3 card will give small speed increase at best. Again, the older architecture of the board is the limitation here. Bandwidth between PCI slots and I/O controller is rated at 500mb/s. Not much above USB2 speeds. Conversely, buying an external enclosure with eSATA capability will bring you in line with SATA2 standards - 3gb/s. See Intel X58 diagram below:

https://www.intel.com/Assets/PDF/prodbrief/x58-product-brief.pdf

If the external storage is just for back up, speed is probably not a paramount concern anyway.

[edit]
That said, there are aftermarket X58 boards (Gigabyte come to mind) with SATA3 and USB3 capability. Our T3500 are not among them, sadly.

I can't make sense of this. Are you perhaps getting your bits and bytes mixed up?
 
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