Are laptop hard drives and SSDs interchangeable?
Solution 1:
In recent laptops both SSDs and HDDs are usually connected to the motherboard via a SATA port on the motherboard and both SSDs and HDDs follow the SATA specification. Newer models of faster SSDs may be connected to an M.2 socket which is mounted directly on the motherboard via either a SATA or a PCI-e connector depending on the model of the SSD.
SATA hard drives are not interchangeable with the parallel ATA (PATA) interface which has been superseded by the serial ATA (SATA) interface which was introduced in 2003.
3 SATA ports and 1 external SATA (eSATA) port
As of 2016-2021, there are five different revisions of the SATA standard.
| Official name | Also called | Net data rate Mbyte/s |
|---|---|---|
| Serial ATA 1,5 Gbit/s | SATA I | 150 |
| Serial ATA 3,0 Gbit/s, SATA Revision 2.x | SATA II, SATA-300 | 300 |
| Serial ATA 6,0 Gbit/s, SATA Revision 3.x | SATA III, SATA-600 | 600 |
| SATA Express 8,0 Gbit/s (PCIe 3.x), SATA Revision 3.2 | 985 | |
| SATA Express 16,0 Gbit/s (PCIe 4.0), SATA Revision 3.2 | 1969 |
SATA II specifications provide backward compatibility to function on SATA I ports. SATA III specifications provide backward compatibility to function on SATA I and SATA II ports. However, the maximum speed of the drive will be slower due to the lower speed limitations of the port. SATA Express interface is backwards compatible with the SATA interface.
mSATA SSDs follow the SATA specification, offering a maximum performance of 6.0Gb/s and look much like mini PCI Express devices, but the two connectors are not inter-compatible.