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I have a couple of ST500DM002-1BD142 drives (6 Gb/sec interface) on an IHC10 3 Gb/sec interface AHCI-capable controller. Will there be much of the performance improvement if I will switch these disks to a 6 Gb/sec controller ?
I myself suppose there won't be any, because one Gb/sec is about 120 Megs/sec transfer, so 3 Gb/sec is about 360 Megs/sec. In the same time tests in the internet indicate this drive is capable of ~120 Megs/sec sequential read tops, which is nearly 1 Gbit/sec. All of the rest is for cache transfers, which isn't that effective since it's very small comparing to the drive size.
But then again, if I'm correct in my calculations, why did the vendor bother manufacturing these drives with a 6 Gb/sec interface, why not simply keeping them up with 3 Gb/sec interface, since all controllers do provide lower speeds for backward compatibility ?