Mac Mini 2014 and SATA HDD speed/negotiated speed settings question?

Question

Mac Mini 2014 and SATA HDD speed/negotiated speed settings question?

I have a new Mac Mini 2014 2.6GHz i5 - with the Hitachi 1TB 5400RPM drive running OS 10.10.1. It is working well and is a worthy replacement for our 2007 Mini.

Today I was looking around the specs and settings and noticed the SATA settings for the HDD drive showed the link speed at 6 Gigabit but the negotiated speed is set to 3 Gigabit. I have searched around and read about people having issues with other chipsets or hard drive firmware incompatibilities with other models of Mac. Why would this be? Is it due to the drive only supporting 3 Gigabit? Searching for the drive model seems to indicate it supports 6 Gigabit. Thank you in advance for all responses.

Mac mini, OS X Yosemite (10.10.1)

Posted on Nov 19, 2014 12:24 PM

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Answer 1

Kappy

Level 10

362,007 points

Nov 19, 2014 12:29 PM in response to mile_hi_local

Because the drive only supports 3.0 Gb/s SATA speed, would be my assumption.

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Answer 2

Csound1

Level 9

60,063 points

Nov 19, 2014 12:40 PM in response to mile_hi_local

It doesn't make any difference. a 5400 rpm drive is nowhere near fast enough to be affected by the bus speed. If the link speed dropped to 1.5Gb/sit still wouldn't make any difference.

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Answer 3

lllaass

Level 10

210,513 points

Nov 19, 2014 12:45 PM in response to mile_hi_local

Per this,

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/notebook-hard-drive-review,3270-3.html

although the drive is advertised as 6 GB/s, it really can't achieve 3

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Answer 4

Nov 19, 2014 2:50 PM in response to mile_hi_local

I greatly appreciate the prompt responses and link information. So, really other than a modern SSD, or high RPM drive, you will not reach the benefits of a 6Gb connection let alone possibly max out a 3Gb connection. Which for a mild daily use Mini would be overkill.

Thank you.

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