I Can't Tell Which SATA my WD HDD Utilizes

[ulyssescant]

The outside of the box lists:

Serial: BLAHBLAHBLAH

Model: WDBAAX5000ENC-NRSN

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 ?

ANYONE? :cry:

[Hammey]

Hi this link gives you the spec’s on your drive. http://www.wdc.com/global/products/specs/?driveID=896&language=1  . It lists the drive as sata 3 and yes sata 3 will give better performance but of course you need sata 3 ports on your motherboard.

[ulyssescant]

Thanks,

The spec sheet says

Transfer Rate (Buffer To Disk) 126 MB/s (Max)

126 MB is not even 1 Gb… So what is the point of a SATA3 here?

It seems SATA1 would even be fine?

Does any mechanical hard drive actually benefit from a SATA3? 

Does buffer to disk mean “writing” and buffer to host mean “reading?”

[fzabkar]

“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.