Monday, June 15, 2009
MacBook Pro confusion this weekend, as some owners of the new unibody 13- and 15-inch notebooks are reporting that their machines are apparently limited to 1.5Gb/s SATA connections rather than the faster 3.0Gb/s SATA-II. Full details are unclear, but it seems that Apple have either switched to SATA hardware or used firmware for the newest MacBook Pros that limits hard-drive connections to the slower speed.
The move has the most impact on those who upgraded to the SSD option in their new MacBook Pro. Regular hard-drives, which the notebooks are both fitted with as standard, will prove unaffected, as the read/write speeds of the drive are slower than SATA. However SSDs, which can manage higher sustained read rates, are clocking in with lower speeds compared to previous-generation MacBooks and MacBook Pros.
Any impact on real-world performance, however, is unknown. Transferring files to external drives would be limited by the USB/Firewire connection rather than the choice of SATA or SATA-II. It’s possible that a new firmware update could “unlock” the faster connectivity, but so far Apple have not publicly commented.
The move has the most impact on those who upgraded to the SSD option in their new MacBook Pro. Regular hard-drives, which the notebooks are both fitted with as standard, will prove unaffected, as the read/write speeds of the drive are slower than SATA. However SSDs, which can manage higher sustained read rates, are clocking in with lower speeds compared to previous-generation MacBooks and MacBook Pros.Any impact on real-world performance, however, is unknown. Transferring files to external drives would be limited by the USB/Firewire connection rather than the choice of SATA or SATA-II. It’s possible that a new firmware update could “unlock” the faster connectivity, but so far Apple have not publicly commented.
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