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Seagate shows off 6Gbps SATA3 hard drive transfer speed

By Sam Symons, 09 March 2009 - 18:53 49 comments

Partnering up with AMD, on Monday Seagate announced the latest Serial ATA specification: SATA3. The new specification offers hard drive transfer speeds of up to 6Gbps, which is around 600MBps.

This new specification was developed by the Serial ATA International Organization, in order to provide a hefty upgrade from today's SATA2 specification. So just how much of an upgrade is it? Your average SATA2 drive today can offer hard drive transfer speeds of up to 3Gbps, which is roughly 300MBps, so in theory SATA3 will be twice as fast. As CNET notes, it's important to know that software and hardware holds back these speeds, so in reality they're about 100MBps less than they could be. Never-the-less, this will leave you with a hard drive that can transfer 500MBps, and that's not something to laugh at.

Most importantly, the newly developed interface will be backwards-compatible with all previous SATA standards, so you won't have to upgrade cables or connectors; this will save consumers a nice bit of cash when they're deciding to upgrade (when SATA3 is released, of course). SATA3 brings with it better power management and native command queuing, which will generally increase system performance.

Seagate is apparently in the last stages of development of a SATA3 hard drive, and you can expect one by the end of this year. Additionally, AMD will fully support the new standard with its current 750 chipset and all future chipsets.

Comments (49)

+Frazell Thomas - 09 March 2009 - 19:14

This looks like awesome news, but the article got me more excited than should be reality. The Article made me feel like Seagate was showing off HDDs that could deliver 500MBps speeds, but I'm sure they are RAID 0 volumes of at least a few disks...
Sam Symons - 09 March 2009 - 19:20

Frazell Thomas said,
This looks like awesome news, but the article got me more excited than should be reality. The Article made me feel like Seagate was showing off HDDs that could deliver 500MBps speeds, but I'm sure they are RAID 0 volumes of at least a few disks...

Did you see that article on Engadget/Gizmodo (or both) that showed off a whole bunch of RAIDed SSDs? They had massive speed...opened all of Microsoft Office in half a second It's madness. Do want.
zeta_immersion - 09 March 2009 - 19:15

wow, i can hardly wait to build a new computer in 2010 (after i graduate) .. then i shall drink beer and watch pron in HD and play games till i get sich of my own smell ... yeah ..
+Beastage - 09 March 2009 - 19:46

Sounds productive... lol.
Krome - 09 March 2009 - 20:13

Beastage is very eager to join in the party
TheNay - 09 March 2009 - 19:18

Now I know when to wait to buy a newer HDD Thanks
+warwagon - 09 March 2009 - 19:19

Sata 3 drive will be cool. But please put more effort in bringing SSD's price down so they can become more mainstream.
RAID 0 - 09 March 2009 - 20:13

warwagon said,
Sata 3 drive will be cool. But please put more effort in bringing SSD's price down so they can become more mainstream.

YES! It's weird, none of the hard drive makers (Seagate, WD, Maxtor)
are releasing SSDs. You'd think they'd be all about it since it's you know... the future of storage.
pjak - 09 March 2009 - 20:30

as it's "the future of storage", I'm sure all companies will first try to squeeze all the life they can out of existing technology, before attempting to release SSDs on the mainstream market...
RAID 0 - 09 March 2009 - 20:41

pjak said,
as it's "the future of storage", I'm sure all companies will first try to squeeze all the life they can out of existing technology, before attempting to release SSDs on the mainstream market...

I agree, what I find funny is the main-stream manufacturers have nothing to offer. I wonder when Western Digital will have an SSD for sale?
OPaul - 10 March 2009 - 15:21

RAID 0 said,
YES! It's weird, none of the hard drive makers (Seagate, WD, Maxtor)
are releasing SSDs. You'd think they'd be all about it since it's you know... the future of storage.
I would guess this is because of the vast difference in producing HDDs and SSDs. They would have to completely change their manufacturing lines.
Andre - 09 March 2009 - 19:38

Never-the-less, this will leave you with a hard drive that can transfer 500MBps, and that's not something to laugh at.
haha.. 500MBps! Don't hold your breath people. That speed is the interface bandwidth, not the actual real read/write speed. SATA2 has theoretical bandwidth of 300MB/s, yet no drive on the market can manage that. Fastest are around 120-140MB/s.. and those drives cost $$$ and spin at 15k RPM.
shakey_snake - 09 March 2009 - 20:05

The fastest storage media on the market don't spin
cybertimber2008 - 09 March 2009 - 21:49

Andre said,
haha.. 500MBps! Don't hold your breath people. That speed is the interface bandwidth, not the actual real read/write speed. SATA2 has theoretical bandwidth of 300MB/s, yet no drive on the market can manage that. Fastest are around 120-140MB/s.. and those drives cost $$$ and spin at 15k RPM.

If you read it again, the theoretical maximum isn't 500... its 800.
The interface bandwidth is 800, so yeah you'll get about 500.
Andre - 10 March 2009 - 06:17

cybertimber2008 said,
If you read it again, the theoretical maximum isn't 500... its 800.
The interface bandwidth is 800, so yeah you'll get about 500.
And if you read it again I nowhere said 500 was the theoretical speed. And if you wish to nitpick, then it's 600, not 800. 6Gbps is 600MBps. SATA interface uses 10bits to encode 8bits. So 6Gb is actually 600MB in SATA terms, nowhere near 800.
OPaul - 10 March 2009 - 15:22

Andre said,
6Gbps is 600MBps.
No it's not. 6Gbps is 715 MBps.
Andre - 10 March 2009 - 17:25

OPaul said,
No it's not. 6Gbps is 715 MBps.
Sigh.. -_-
http://www.villagegeek.com/Archives/WhatsNew/SATAII_6-06.htm
...Serial ATA transmits only a single bit per clock, the serial bus may be run at a much higher speed to compensate for the loss of parallelism. Serial ATA was introduced with a bandwidth of 1500Mbits/sec, or 1.5Gbits/sec. Because data is encoded using 8b/10b encoding (an 80% efficient encoding used with digital differential signaling to maintain a constant average â��DCâ�� bias point)...
SATA 6Gbits/s
6000MHz embedded clock
x 1 bit per clock
x 80% for 8b10b encoding
/ 8 bits per byte
= 600 MBytes/sec
6000 * 0.80 / 8 = 600MBytes/s
I should also point out that it should be Gibits and MiBytes, but nobody really uses that terminology anyway.
Glendi - 10 March 2009 - 17:58

Andre said,
And if you read it again I nowhere said 500 was the theoretical speed. And if you wish to nitpick, then it's 600, not 800. 6Gbps is 600MBps. SATA interface uses 10bits to encode 8bits. So 6Gb is actually 600MB in SATA terms, nowhere near 800.
If you re-read it again you said 500 is the interface bandwidth which is the theoretical speed.
cybertimber2008 - 10 March 2009 - 21:31

Glendi said,
If you re-read it again you said 500 is the interface bandwidth which is the theoretical speed.

Thanks Glendi. That's exactly what I was reffering to.
rakeshishere - 09 March 2009 - 20:13

After my bad experience with Seagate Barracuda hdd, i just get so ****d when i hear their name. Lost all my years of data (u can consider it as porn or whatever).
I swear .... i am never buying a Seagate ever and wont even recommend it. They just handled the problem unprofessionally with delay of firmware, wrong untested firmware updates etc and all that crap i experienced is probably the biggest bad experience i ever had.