Change disk ssd. How check which SATA version is supported?

Question

I hava Lenovo g580 laptop. I want to change disk to SSD drive, but I'm not sure if my laptop support SATA 3 (6Gbps).

I write following output:

dmesg | grep SATA
[    3.190743] ahci 0000:00:1f.2: AHCI 0001.0300 32 slots 6 ports 6 Gbps 0x5 impl SATA mode
[    3.199450] ata1: SATA max UDMA/133 abar m2048@0xd3617000 port 0xd3617100 irq 43
[    3.199455] ata3: SATA max UDMA/133 abar m2048@0xd3617000 port 0xd3617200 irq 43
[    3.518365] ata1: SATA link up 3.0 Gbps (SStatus 123 SControl 300)
[    3.857921] ata3: SATA link up 1.5 Gbps (SStatus 113 SControl 300)

Is that means I Can use SSD disk in SATAa 6Gbps mode?

Answer 1

First know that all SATA versions are backward compatible. This means that if you insert a SSD that is SATA 3.0 to a computer that only supports up to SATA 2.0, the SSD will still work but at the speed of a SATA 2.0.

IF you look at the specs for that computer you will see that it has support for SATA 2.0 and SATA 3.0:

Up to 1TB [SATA II (SATA III compatible)] HDD 
storage – [320GB/500GB(5400rpm/7400rpm),
750GB(5400rpm)/1TB]

To check which one you are using right now type the following (Assuming you only have one SSD):

dmesg | grep -i sata | grep 'link up' | tail -n1

Or to see which are supported by your SSD type the following (Assuming the SSD is sda)

sudo hdparm -iI /dev/sda