June 15th, 2009
Is SATA capped at 1.5Gbps on the 13" MacBook Pro
For some, the pride of owning a brand new 13″ MacBook Pro was shortlived as they discovered that the speed of their SATA hard drives are capped at 1.5Gbps, well below the expected 3.0Gbps.
The difference between 1.5Gbps and 3.0Gbps makes little difference when you’re dealing with traditional hard drives, but when it comes to newer solid-state drives (SSDs) then a cap at 1.5Gbps means owners are experiencing a huge performance hit.
Over on the Macrumors.com forum there’s a thread that’s currently 38 pages long (and growing) full of confused owners. Some think that this issue may be down to the NVIDIA chipset driver, while other’s think it’s a big, and some think that the hard drive speed depends on which processor is in the MacBook Pro (2.26GHz or 2.53GHz).
There’s also a growing thread over on Apple’s support forum …
Note: There’s nothing on Apple’s 13″ MacBook Pro tech specs page about hard drive speed.
If you’re stumping up the cash for an SSD, this speed bump is seriously hitting performance, almost to the point where those looking for the best data throughput might be better off sticking with a regular hard drive.
Is this deliberate? Can it be fixed? Is it down to Apple trying to save money or differentiating the product line? At this point we just don’t know …
[UPDATE: This issue may affect the 15" MacBook Pro too ...]
Adrian is a technology journalist and author who has devoted over a decade to helping users get the most from technology. He also runs a popular blog called The PC Doctor. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations
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