SSD running only on SATA 1.5 Gbps? Where's the problem?

[Arston]

I got a new SSD Samsung 470 Series 128GB SATA 3Gps for my Dell Vostro 1700 laptop. All my hardware supports SATA 3Gbps, there's no reason for the SSD not to work well. I updated to the latest firmware, made a fresh installation of Windows 7 x64, installed the latest chipset driver and the latest Intel RST. I then tested the speed of the drive and it was about a half of what it's supposed to be, and I've read reviews showing very high performance. The problem, I believe, is that when I looked at the RST window it says that the SATA transfer rate is 1.5 Gb/s. So there must be something stopping the drive from running on SATA 3G?
I contacted Dell and after quite a long talk and waiting on hold they told me that there should be no reason for it not to run on SATA 3Gps.
I should also mention that I tested the SSD on another computer and it runs as fast as it should be and in SATA 3G.

Even though it's a huge improvement over my old HDD it still bugs me that I can get only about half the performance of the drive.

Any help on solving this would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Tmagic650]

The laptops motherboard may not support that SATA speed for SSD drives, no matter what Dell says. If the Dell support person doesn't have that particular problem on their computer list, they are helpless, as most tech support people are. Most of us here are "Real World Techs" and not Geek Squad flunkies

 

[Arston]

I've seen people on the net running SATA II on Vostro 1700, so that's strange. Do you know if there's a way to check if the motherboard supports SATA II ?

 

[tolsty]

I've seen people on the net running SATA II on Vostro 1700, so that's strange. Do you know if there's a way to check if the motherboard supports SATA II ?

I've just seen one in mirror.
When I ran my Vostro 1700 in AHCI mode, max speed was127 MBps (measured by Roadkil's Disk Speed). Then I switched to ATA and it went up about 1.5 times on each level. So now it's about 190 MBps.

Hope this helps.

 

[Arston]

But this way you can't use TRIM, can you?
Thanks for the reply by the way

 

[tolsty]

I just ran TRIM optimization in Intel SSD Toolbox and and it reported success. And I didn't find confirmation in the web that AHCI is required for TRIM. Did you see one?

 

[tolsty]

Despite the speed test result, Windows experience index dropped from 7.2 to 7.0 and the system seemed to take bit longer to boot.
Switched back to AHCI.

 

[Arston]

In the matter of fact I'm also very happy with the performance atm. Windows boots in about 11 seconds to desktop and everything is very snappy, even though it's sata 1.5 Gbps. It seems to be the motherboard, since you have the same "restrictions". Thank you for your input. I'll happily use it like this.