However, when I physically take the HDD out of the box, it reads:
S/N: BLAHBLAHBLAH (The serial DOES, in fact, match that on the label outside of the box)
MDL: WD5000AAKX - 001CA0
From what I can gather from Google, the outside sticker refers to a SATA II (3 Gbps) HDD and the label ON the HDD refers to a SATA III (6 Gbps)… Someone help please? Is there any real way to tell? Would I even notice a difference (I’m a gamer)?
On the label ON the HDD it also says “pins 5-6 limits PHY to 3Gbps”
Why would it say that if it WEREN’T operating higher than that, aka SATA III ?
“Buffer to disk” means reading or writing data between the drive’s cache RAM and its platters. “Buffer to host” would mean reading or writing between cache RAM and the SATA controller. The latter would be limited by the speed of the SATA interface or the speed of the SDRAM. The former would be limited by the physical construction of the drive, eg RPM and bits per track.