Does SATA III to USB 3.0 cable slow down a SSD significantly?

TheMystic said:

I purchased a SiliconPower A55 internal SSD and using it with a SATA III to USB 3.0 adaptor cable to connect to my laptop's USB 3.0 port.

Crystal DiskMark test shows very low read/ write speeds.

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Is this a problem because of the cable?

If I connect my Samsung T5 or T7, they have very good speeds of over 400 MBPS.

I tried copying a large Windows image file of size 12 GB and the copy window shows a speed of about 111 MBPS. This is still very low compared to the claimed speed of 500 MBPS.

Is the Silicon Power SSD faulty or is it being severely limited by the cabl

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Here are a few answers I found....

USB 3 is supposed to have a maximum throughput of 5Gbps. That should allow for around 500MB/s transfer at best. However, there are no HDDs which can handle that speed. Definitely not as a constant transfer where it’s larger than the cache on the drive / in RAM.

SLC vs. MLC vs. TLC. These three acronyms, fully-defined as "single-level cells," "multi-level cells," and "triple-level cells," devise the methodology and technology that is used for flash memory-based drives. The 'level' determines how many bits are stored per cell, with more bits per cell correlating with more storage at a diminished cost (but less stability)

there is much more to answer your question... Here are the google queries I used...

ssd ratings and specs to know

ssd sustained throughput best

usb 3.0 transfer rates

Well yes, but it is not the cable that is slowing you down, but the adapter. SATA to USB conversion requires an adapter because they are different protocols. Also, SATA itself is not ideal for SSDs.

SATA was designed primarily for spinning hard drives (HDDs) in mind. While you can use SSDs on SATA (I guess that is what we would call a retrofit) but SATA really bottlenecks SSDs.
Traditional HDDs could only write so much data at a given time, there was no need for many parallel write operations, rather a command queue. But SSDs are different. They can accept many parallels input/output streams. Except they won't, because SATA channels them into one or two.
Much like using a plastic straw to pump water whereas you could use a garden hose for much better throughput.

PCI-E NVMe is the way to go for SSDs. Naturally then you need SSDs with that interface, so NVMe SSDs. They are fast and benefit greatly from parallel operations. Modern computers have internal slots for such SSDs but older ones don't. Still you can usually use a PCI-E to M.2 NVMe adapter to enable that kind of connection and speed even on older computers, as most of them have PCI-E anyway.

And if you want to create an external NVMe SSD you can do that too. Just as you could get an external SATA to USB enclosure adapter, you can do the same for NVMe. There are excellent PCI-e/NVMe to USB Type-C bridges available. Sadly they are much more expensive than SATA to USB adapters. Twice the cost at least. But they are worth it.

SATA III cables and (cables/adapters) are standard for SATA SSD Drives. Anyone moving from an HDD will be blown-away with the speed of a conventional SATA SSD.

Plus, you can use your USB 3.0-3.2 Ports to plug-in the cable/adapter with a SATA SSD and use it for System Image Backups, manually backing-up personal files and data bases.

Plus. You can have your most important documents backed-up on the SSD that is attached to the cable/adapter and unplug the cable from the USB port. Then put the SSD (cable/adapter too if you like) in a safe or fireproof box. This keeps the critical information away from your computer room in case something happens like a fire or flood and your computer room is destroyed. People in these ultra-climate change areas especially need a fire/water proof box for storing valuable documents.

NVME.M.2 is a (nice to have) but older motherboards do not have a PCIe plug-in module for them. Your next computer should definitely have the state-of-the-art NVME.M.2 SSD for it's C-Drive.

Hope that helps.

Three years ago this month my ~10 year old home built computer ghosted (mobo failed). So I started researching a new build and that's when I discovered NVMe M.2 drives. I bought a mobo that has 2 NVMe slots, a 8th gen i7 CPU, a DirectX 12 & WDDM 3 compliant GPU, and 32 GB of RAM. Little did I know I put together a fully compliant Windows 11 computer long before I heard of Win 11. In hindsight, I'm glad my old build failed back then as prices are crazy stupid right now. I'd like a better GPU, but refuse to pay over $1K for one.

The NVMe M.2 drives are crazy fast. Yesterday I copied a 87GB folder from one drive to the other and it took about 15 seconds.

Thanks guys for all the help.

I returned the SSD because it didn't serve the purpose I bought it for, even if it was the adaptor that wasn't able to deliver required speeds.

Between Samsung T7 and SanDisk Extreme, which one would you guys recommend?

TheMystic said:

Thanks guys for all the help.

I returned the SSD because it didn't serve the purpose I bought it for, even if it was the adaptor that wasn't able to deliver required speeds.

Between Samsung T7 and SanDisk Extreme, which one would you guys recommen

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Remember to buy a USB 3.0 or 3.1 Cable/Adapter. You may have a USB 2.0 cable/adapter. I cannot advise on your two choices. I am a Samsung SSD user who simply plugs in the USB 3.0 Cable/Adapter into an 870 EVO SATA 1TB. You do need a portable SSD/Case.

TheMystic said:

Thanks guys for all the help.

I returned the SSD because it didn't serve the purpose I bought it for, even if it was the adaptor that wasn't able to deliver required speeds.

Between Samsung T7 and SanDisk Extreme, which one would you guys recommend?

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I have not very good experience with Sandisk except for their Photography oriented high-performance Compact Flash cards., which are good I have not used Sandisk SSD so probably either one would do you. The Sandisk may be a bit faster, but personally I would go with the Saamsung.

Like I said, SATA is a huge bottleneck for SSDs. That protocol was mainly designed for HDDs. Yes, it works with SSDs, and in fact very commonly used with SSDs because this combination works on practically every motherboard, but...

PCI-E SSDs (NVMe) is the way to go. If you were surprised how fast a SATA SSD can be compared to SATA HDDs, then you would be definitely shocked to see how fast an NVMe SSD can be.

If you're looking for an external enclosure, say USB, then it makes things a bit more complicated, because the SATA-To-USB controller is yet another bottleneck. It is desirable to have a SATA to USB 3.0+ bridge (and not ancient USB 2.0) but even then the quality of the adapter matters, there are speed differences. Still they won't be very fast.

You can get external enclosures for NVMe SSDs as well. They are practically a PCI-E to USB Type-C adapter (technically a micro-computer, that is). They are naturally more expensive because much more hardware is put in there, but they are blazing fast.

And while it is generally true that you cannot put NVMe disks into old motherboards missing the neccessary socket (m.2 2880 / NGFF) , you can still get an PCI-E card that goes into your graphics card's slot and gives you one, or two M.2 2880 / NGFF socket, where you can put your NVMe SSDs in.
Since most, if not every motherboard manufactured in the last 10-12 years probably has a PCI-E port for graphics, some of them even have two, you have a pretty good shot to use NVMe SSDs even in older boards. However, do not forget that this comes at a cost: you will be limited to the speed of the PCI-E interface itself. And more importantly, in most cases it means that you won't be able to boot from your NVMe drive, but you could still use it as a secondary data-disk. It will be recognized, just not at boot time. There are workarounds available for some boards to make booting possible but this is not guaranteed at all.
Oh and of course since this will occupy your PCI-E port, this means, no graphics card can be plugged in, and you will have to resort to using built-in graphics, unless you have two PCI-E ports. But regardless, using this method can get you much higher read and write speeds than any external enclosure or adapter could, especially on older boards which lack USB 3.2

edit> Don't get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with SATA SSDs. They are fine, and they are the most compatible. No complications. It is just that, it is usually a better option to buy an NVMe SSD instead: you get much better performance for a similar amount of money. Fitting in an NVMe SSD even into an older computer, much less a new one, is not that difficult anymore.

Good luck and keep us posted!

ish4d0w said:

the neccessary socket (m.2 2880 / NGFF) ,

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It having an M.2 2880 / NGFF socket does not guarantee that it will support M.2 NVMe SSDs, though. The "2880" is just the size of the PCB, 28mm × 80mm, so if the M.2 socket only supports "B Key", then you will still be stuck on M.2 SATA, which is typically not much faster than 500MB/s, albeit an M.2 SATA SSD that can max out the speed of the SATA interface both in terms of sustained (sequential) read speed and in terms of sustained (sequential) write speed is dirt cheap now. So if, for example, you have an older laptop with both a traditional 2.5 inch HDD and a small capacity (e.g., 128GB / 256 GB) M.2 SATA SSD, then it might still be worth considering to upgrade this SSD to a bigger capacity one (e.g., 512GB / 1TB) so that more programs and/or user data can then be moved from HDD to SSD. That is, if we can assume that the relatively much slower speed of the HDD is the real bottleneck to these programs and/or user data. Which isn't necessarily always the case, as this not only depends on the size of the specific part of the data that will be used by the specific task in question, but also it depends on how this data will be used, just like it also depends on other performance related factors, like CPU speed and/or RAM size, for example.

For normal playback of video files you don't necessarily need to use your SSD. But the background noise from a typical 7200rpm desktop HDD (and some noisy 2.5 inch HDDs) may be a reason for doing it anyway. Laptop users with both an SSD and a HDD can also save on battery power if they can force the HDD to sleep, i.e. when only infrequently used programs and/or user data are placed on the HDD. The bottom line is, the total size of storage capacity of the SSD can have a bigger impact on performance, and on various performance related factors, than the actual speed of the SSD. It all heavily depends on what exactly it is that is holding performance back, under what set of circumstances. If all you do is surf the web and read a few e-mails, it could also be that it isn't held back in any way that can be noticed. Unless money is no object, resource monitoring, chekcing the system requirements, analyzing/looking at specs versus prices and looking at what you already have before deciding if/when/how to upgrade should always be the first logical step.

That being said, to be able to use an M.2 NVMe SSD, you need the specific type of M.2 socket that either supports "M Key" or supports "M+B Key", the latter is compatible with both M.2 SATA and M.2 NVMe. But motherboards that can only support M.2 SATA (i.e. instead of support M.2 NVMe or support both) are getting quite old anyway.

ish4d0w said:

you will be limited to the speed of the PCI-E interface itself.

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This still also applies to modern desktop motherboards and laptops, as a lot of them don't have PCIe Gen 4×4. My laptop doesn't, even though it uses an 11th Gen Intel CPU. But I went for the Samsung 980 Pro upgrade anyway, as it wasn't that much more expensive than the 870 Evo, and, even though it is held back to ~3,500MB/s by my laptop's PCIe bus, the 980 Pro still offers better write speed and runs at a slightly cooler temp.

TheMystic said:

Those can be ruled out because my Samsung SSDs run fine on them.

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The Silicon Power A55 SSD's are different than a lot of others. They depend heavily on caching. They can be very fast at first and gradually slow down during file transfer. I have one in a laptop and it can be inconsistent. They are good but not the same quality as Samsung, WD, or Crucial.

You buy a SATA SSD to replace a Hard Disk Drive (HDD). Forget about NVMe SSD when your motherboard is old and cannot accomdate the NVME.

Old motherboard, new SATA SSD whatever your choice. Replace to clone your HDD to your SSD. Much faster machine with SATA SSD. OR...buy a new motherboard, CPU, RAM, PSU, Video Card etc. and build it. OR...buy a prebuilt modern computer when the market settles down.

That's all anyone needs to know about OLD vs NEW motherboards and Solid State Drives.

Always Why said:

You buy a SATA SSD to replace a Hard Disk Drive (HDD). Forget about NVMe SSD when your motherboard is old and cannot accomdate the NVME.

Old motherboard, new SATA SSD whatever your choice. Replace to clone your HDD to your SSD. Much faster machine with SATA SSD. OR...buy a new motherboard, CPU, RAM, PSU, Video Card etc. and build it. OR...buy a prebuilt modern computer when the market settles down.

That's all anyone needs to know about OLD vs NEW motherboards and Solid State Drives.

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This thread is about laptops. Although a SATA SSD can be used to replace a HDD, doing so isn't necessarily always feasible, as not every "non NVMe" laptop has the capability to use more than just a single internal drive unit (be it a single 2.5 inch SATA bay or a single M.2 socket that only supports SATA, so no NVMe can be used inside the laptop in question). Large capacity SSDs are expensive. So, another thing to maybe want to consider is whether it can still be worth spending extra on an upgrade when 1/ it is still going to be limited by the relatively slow speed of SATA (even, after you transfer it to a newer laptop that you might end up buying at some point in the not too distant future) and 2/ the cost of a large capacity SATA SSD is often typically not much lower than an NVMe SSD of equal capacity that, also typically, offers 6-7 times better read speed in comparison. The good news in this regard is that an external USB 3.2 Gen 2×1 (10 Gbps) enclosure that can support an NVMe SSD is relatively inexpensive and can still be plugged into an older laptop the USB ports on which are limited to only 5 Gbps. Depending on budget (versus prices and availability), and also depending on what you already have and how your future upgrade plan looks like, remember things like the fact that an NVMe SSD can still also be transferred, at a later date, from an external enclosure to a newer laptop with an internal M.2 socket that can support NVMe. The choice of whether to buy a SATA SSD versus not may therefore be not as simple as you had envisioned it to be, at least not to the point of "That's all anyone needs to know, and etc..".

If there is no need to boot from an NVMe SSD and we're talking about desktop computers then you could get a PCI-E to NVMe expansion card and plug your NVMe drives into old motherboards which never had the ability to connect NVMe drives.

For instance an adapter like this https://www.amazon.com/ASUS-M-2-X16-V2-Threadripper/dp/B07NQBQB6Z

Or AXAGON PCEM2-D

Could work. But in most cases you cannot boot from the drive then. Exceptions apply, there are scenerios when you can even boot from it.

And you would get MUCH BETTER speeds and performance than with a SATA SSD. If all PCI-E slots are occupied, or there isn't even to begin with (such as laptops) then I would go with the SATA SSD of course.

ish4d0w said:

If there is no need to boot from an NVMe SSD and we're talking about desktop computers then you could get a PCI-E to NVMe expansion card and plug your NVMe drives into old motherboards which never had the ability to connect NVMe drives.

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Whoever said that clearly don't understand NVME drives use a far faster interface than the slow SATA ports do.

The "problem" is whether the (your) motherboard natively (built in) supports NVMe drives. If the board supports NVMe drives, booting is as easy as booting off a SATA drive.

If the board does NOT support NVMe drives, you'll need an adapter card. The problem here is booting off an NVMe drive installed on an adapter card can be problematic as many have found. It basically becomes a guessing game as to which card, drive, and motherboard works together well. That said, they can still be use as a storage device without issue.

Anyway, some will argue this isn't so, but the internet is rife with the contrary. Again, depends on hardware and support.

Oops! I just re-read a couple posts and see this is about Laptops, not both Laptops and Desktops. That said, you still need an SSD Cable/Adapter to clone your HDD to the SSD. Easy enough to do with many free programs i.e. Macrium Reflect and EaseUS Todo.

Replacing a good Laptop's HDD with an SSD is the best optimizing upgrade you can do. However, if you're dealing a Laptop with only 2 to 4 GB of Memory you might as well get a new Laptop. Just never buy a new Laptop with an HDD or has less than 6GB of RAM.

The components in a Gaming Laptop is another matter all together.

Always Why said:

Just never buy a new Laptop with an HDD or

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Yeah, but some people don't want to buy a new laptop or maybe they can't afford to, so, if the old laptop in question only has room for a single HDD and no SSD, then if their internal HDD is 2TB because they really need that much internal storage capacity, they are stuck with the choice between 1/ paying a lot of money to replace their 2TB internal HDD with a 2TB internal SATA SSD that will be typically not much cheaper than a 2TB NVMe SSD that can perform 6-7 times faster in comparison to this same 2TB internal SATA SSD or 2/ they can leave the HDD in place and find cheaper storage solutions by looking at smaller capacity SDDs that are possible to be used externally, via USB 3.0, although neither one of both these two different choices meets your colorful description of "best optimizing upgrade you can do", at least in my view, and, even by a long shot.

hdmi said:

Yeah, but some people don't want to buy a new laptop or maybe they can't afford to, so, if the old laptop in question only has room for a single HDD and no SSD, ...

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Yes. But in this case one could use ReadyBoost (with a quality flashdrive connected via USB) or replace the HDD with an SSHD.

An SSHD is basically a HDD with a very large cache that it intelligently preloads frequently accessed files into. So basically a HDD grouped together with a small SSD, fitting on one single SATA port and in the same 2.5" form factor.

But I do not believe there are many notebooks out there matching your description that lack M.2 slots or at least an optibay slot.

Those which have a 1 TB or 2 TB HDD, probably have a M.2 slot or if it is an older notebook then an optical drive, which could be replaced for an SSD with optibay.

TheMystic said:

Thanks guys for all the help.

I returned the SSD because it didn't serve the purpose I bought it for, even if it was the adaptor that wasn't able to deliver required speeds.

Between Samsung T7 and SanDisk Extreme, which one would you guys recommend?

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I have a 2TB SanDisk Extreme SSD and a 1TB Samsung T5 SSD. I've had the Samsung for years. It's smaller, but it's slightly slower. I switch between USB-C connections. The SanDisk Extreme is for backups and the Samsung for work files. The Samsung SSD you're looking at is certainly the newer model that should be quicker than what I have. I've not had the SanDisk long enough to form any real opinion of it. Personally, I'd probably stick with the Samsung T7.

I was playing around with Windows installation, which meant several times wiping the disk and installing a new image. Of course, I wasn't using my primary (internal) disk for this purpose, and I did not want to play too much with my backup disks either.

Some of the processes (like when using Rufus or WinToUSB) involved wiping the whole disk, and that would be a tedious thing to do.

So I decided to buy a low capacity external SSD primarily for this purpose. Since I already had a SATA to USB adapter cable, I was open to getting an internal SSD too if it was cheaper. Also because external SSDs are usually only available in 500 GB or more size, and I didn't need a disk that big for this purpose.

I tried using USB flash drives, but those were extremely slow despite supporting USB 3.1.

Hope this clarifies the reason behind making this post.

jvickers said:

I have a 2TB SanDisk Extreme SSD and a 1TB Samsung T5 SSD. I've had the Samsung for years. It's smaller, but it's slightly slower. I switch between USB-C connections. The SanDisk Extreme is for backups The Samsung SSD you're looking at is certainly the newer model that should be quicker than what I have. I've not had the SanDisk long enough to form any real opinion of it. Personally, I'd probably stick with the Samsung T7.

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I have a 2019 T5 and a 2021 T7T. Very happy with both.

I'm inclined more towards the SanDisk (if it is comparable in terms of performance and longiviity) just to have variety.

But now I am thinking I should probably get an M.2 Nvme like Samsung 980 and an enclosure with thunderbolt support.