4

With a negligible amount of knowledge concerning PC hardware I'm trying to figure out how to upgrade my Samsung ATIV Book 4 NP470R5E-K02UB notebook with an SSD. I didn't even know where to start so I contacted Samsung. They first replied that it "does not support SSD". Upon further contact I was told that the reason is that my motherboard is equipped with a SATA 2 port, and an SSD would require a SATA 3.

However, I found out there are actually plenty "SATA 2 SSD" drives being offered. And these guys here have run some tests and concluded that connecting an SSD to a SATA 2 port is totally worth it. Does this all mean that Samsung support misinformed me and I should actually be fine purchasing a SATA 2 drive and plugging it in? What else should I watch out for in terms of compatibility?

Actually, another thing that is confusing me is that the abovementioned people seem to be plugging a Samsung 840 Pro SSD into a SATA 2 port, although everywhere I've looked it is being sold as an SATA 3 drive. What's the solution to this puzzle?

I guess I just need a certain amount of 101 laid upon me...

2 Answers 2

4

All the SATA's are compatible with each other, they just wont run at the full speed so if you put a sata3 drive in a sata2 port it will only run at 3gb/s instead of 6gb/s.

I have that same laptop as well and i have put an ssd in it although its not the Samsung but a Corsair Neutron GTX (was on sale at the time)

Samsung support have not misinformed you, its just that they wont support you if something goes wrong and you have a part in that they have declared un-supported, or the person who replied to you doesn't know what they are talking about. But if your fine with that I would go ahead and buy an ssd

2
  • Oh, great! Since you have the same computer: so you didn't replace the motherboard or anything other then the drive itself, for that matter?
    – imakhlin
    Oct 23, 2014 at 19:17
  • Nope, just replaced the drive
    – Fegnoid
    Oct 24, 2014 at 7:07
2

I have the exact same Samsung ATIV Book 4 with the exact same issue, and I was able to find help on Samsung's site.

Most SSDs available on the market today are designed for SATA 6Gb/s (SATA 3.x). Many consumers still have older machines, however, which do not have support for the latest SATA revision. Fortunately, SSDs are backwards compatible with older SATA versions. They will, however, be limited by the maximum bandwidth supported by the host machine (e.g. a SATA 6Gb/s SSD connected to a SATA 3Gb/s computer will not be able to reach transfer speeds more than 300MB/s, even though the drive might be rated for performance well over 500MB/s).

If you're like me, you might be interested in how you can attain the SATA 3 speeds. Well, they have an answer for that on the same page.

SATA expansion cards are widely available in the market. These cards promise to add and/or upgrade SATA ports on an existing system. They are limited, however, by a certain amount of overhead and will often not be capable of providing a modern SSD with the throughput it needs to reach maximum performance. Thus, Samsung recommends connecting your 840 Series SSD to a native SATA 3.0 (6Gb/s) port to enjoy its full potential.

There have been questions asked here on SuperUser about it as well:

Please post any additional findings and results to help other interested users (like me).

5
  • Thanks a lot! Very informative. Next week I should finally be able to upgrade my laptop with an SSD and subsequently install Linux. I will let you know how this works out then.
    – imakhlin
    Nov 18, 2014 at 9:06
  • I think I'm going to install the SATA 3 drive and settle for the SATA 2 speed. If I still need it to be faster, then I can look into upgrading other components. The benefit to going with a SATA 3 SSD in our case will be that we are making a "future-proof" purchase for whenever we finally buy new laptops with SATA 3 controllers. Nov 18, 2014 at 19:23
  • By the way, David, I don't even know yet what is underneath that lid! How many SATA slots are there in the mobo? Is what we currently have just one big 750GB HDD occupying one slot? What I'm getting at is: do we get to keep that HDD in addition to the new SSD?
    – imakhlin
    Nov 19, 2014 at 2:07
  • There's just one that I can see. I only opened the main door that you slide off. You just need a screw driver to take out one screw. I just did it. I didn't even turn my computer off. Nov 19, 2014 at 4:14
  • Yeah, I know.. The thing is: I don't even have a screwdriver here where I currently am =)
    – imakhlin
    Nov 19, 2014 at 4:21

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .