SATA, short for Serial ATA, is a computer bus interface for mass storage devices such as hard drives, optical drives, and SSDs. The version 2 of SATA was introduced more than a decade ago in 2004, featuring the maximum data transfer rate at 3.0 Gbit/s. And the version 3 was introduced 5 years later in 2009, doubled the transfer rate to 6.0 Gbit/s, a perfect fit for the SSDs that started to evolve as the mainstream highspeed storage.
Out of the box, Windows doesn’t provide a tool that provides details about the STAT storage controller you have on your motherboard. It’s hard to tell whether it supports SATA 3 or just STAT 2. Even though SATA 3 is commonly supported on the modern computer motherboards, it’s always good to know if the SSD drive you bought is connected to the right port to provide the best performance.
HWiNFO is a free portable system tool that provides a very comprehensive and in-depth hardware information for your Windows system. It runs on all Windows platforms including Windows 10 with the support for both 32-bit and 64-bit editions. It even has a real-time system monitoring and extensive reporting features.
Launch the tool, it scans your system automatically and displays a window where you can find which STAT version your drives are connected to.
As you can see, I have two drives installed on my computer, the SSD drive is connected as SATA 3 at 6 Gb/s and my regular 1TB data drive is connected as SATA 2 at 3 Gb/s.
Does that mean the storage controller I have support SATA 3?
Close the System Summary window and expand the Bus section and PCI Bus on the left pane. Highlight the SATA AHCI Controller item and you will find which generation the SATA controller supports right under SATA Host Controller section on the right.
