Acer Travelmate B113-E SATA issue confirmation.

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greyem
greyem Member Posts: 13 New User
edited March 2023 in 2014 Archives

Hi there,
I've been using an Acer Travelmate B113E with a Celeron 1017u for a couple of days and decided to buy and install an 840 Evo SSD in it last night, but after everything was done the software says that it's not running at SATA 3 but instead SATA 2 which I then confirmed using CrystalDiskMark.

 

There was a previous post more than a year ago on this forum (with no replies) and that user mentioned that the SATA bus is capable of 6Gb/s and by looking at the service manual for the model I can confirm that.  So why is the bandwidth only 3Gb/s?

 

I've updated all the Intel drivers as well as an AHCI driver.  The BIOS version is the same (2.21) but the date on the one on the laptop doesn't match the one on the drivers page.  I'm more inclined to believe that the driver on the website was put online later rather than there being 2 BIOSs with the exact same version numbers.

 

So what can be done?

 

Help and advice will be very much appreciated.

Thanks for reading.

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Answers

  • JackE
    JackE ACE Posts: 44,605 Trailblazer
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    What is the factory-installed OS?

     

    Jack E/NJ

    Jack E/NJ

  • greyem
    greyem Member Posts: 13 New User
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    It's Windows 8 64-bit.

  • JackE
    JackE ACE Posts: 44,605 Trailblazer
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    Did you try to upgrade to 8.1?

     

    Jack E/NJ

    Jack E/NJ

  • greyem
    greyem Member Posts: 13 New User
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    Yes it's actually the first thing I did when I received it.

  • JackE
    JackE ACE Posts: 44,605 Trailblazer
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    That may be the problem. The intel chipsets for the factory-installed Win8 and factory-installed Win8.1 are not the same. The only definitive way I know of checking this out is to re-set to factory-installed while saving your data. I'm not sure this is worth testing out. Other than the software SATA2 v SATA3 indications, are you having any problems with the drive?

     

    Jack E/NJ

    Jack E/NJ

  • greyem
    greyem Member Posts: 13 New User
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    No, everything else is fine.

    Is it possible to get the correct chipset drivers?

  • JackE
    JackE ACE Posts: 44,605 Trailblazer
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    The latest intel drivers are supposed to be on the Acer support site. Click support at the top of this page. Choose your country. Click drivers/manuals. Then select your Travelmate notebook model and the factory-installed Win8 and Win8.1. You'll note the chipset drivers are different. Because the Win8.1 driver is not listed as an upgrade from Win8, I'm not sure it's gonna work for you. It could cause problems. Again, I'm not sure if this is worth the gamble.

     

    Jack E/NJ  

    Jack E/NJ

  • greyem
    greyem Member Posts: 13 New User
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    Are you talking about the Intel Chipset drivers?

    The 8 driver is 9.3 and the 8.1 driver is 9.4.

     

    Which driver do you think I should install? (8 and 8.1 are basically the same aren't they?)

    I have a backup just in case something happens.

  • JackE
    JackE ACE Posts: 44,605 Trailblazer
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    As I said, if the 8.1 driver was listed as a Win8 upgrade, which it is NOT, I'd recommend trying the 8.1 driver. Since it's only listed as a Win8.1 driver, suggests to me it's for a different chipset hardware. I could be wrong. But then again, I could be right. Sorry, I think you're gonna have to make the decision on if you want to take a chance on trying the Win8.1 driver since that's the OS you now have on this machine. Let us know what you decide to do.

     

    Jack E/NJ

    Jack E/NJ

  • greyem
    greyem Member Posts: 13 New User
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    So I installed the driver for 8.1 and it didn't change anything.

     

    I keep thinking that Acer themselves did something in the BIOS or in the hardware (like the flat ribbon cable which connects the SATA port to the motherboard) to keep it at 3Gb/s even though the chipset is capable of 6Gb/s.

  • JackE
    JackE ACE Posts: 44,605 Trailblazer
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    No harm in checking the bios settings. Be cautious about changing anything though. 8^)

     

    Jack E/NJ

    Jack E/NJ

  • greyem
    greyem Member Posts: 13 New User
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    I took these a couple of days ago.  I didn't see anything that could be of help, do you?

     

    sKCfwvr.jpg

  • JackE
    JackE ACE Posts: 44,605 Trailblazer
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    On the main tab screen, what other options besides AHCI & IDE are there for SATA mode?satamode.jpg

     

    Thanks

     

    Jack E/NJ

    Jack E/NJ

  • greyem
    greyem Member Posts: 13 New User
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    It's just those two options.

  • JackE
    JackE ACE Posts: 44,605 Trailblazer
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    Your motherboard specs apparently shows SATA-300, not SATA-3.  Here's the SATA specs I found.

     

    SATA 1.0 = SATA 150 = 1.5GB/s
    SATA 2.0 = SATA 300 = 3GB/s
    SATA 3.0 = SATA 600 = 6GB/s

     

    Jack E/NJ 

    Jack E/NJ

  • greyem
    greyem Member Posts: 13 New User
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    Where did you find that info?

    So is it the motherboard that is holding it back?  I checked on the Intel 7 series chipset that the laptop has and all variations of it have SATA 3 ports.

  • greyem
    greyem Member Posts: 13 New User
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    What do you think is limiting the bandwidth?

    It can't be the chipset because the HM70 supports SATA 3.

  • JackE
    JackE ACE Posts: 44,605 Trailblazer
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    Hmmmm? I'll guess the bottleneck is the SATA-300 interface between the chipset and the drive. Am I right? 8^)

     

    Jack E/NJ

    Jack E/NJ

  • greyem
    greyem Member Posts: 13 New User
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    Apologies for the late reply.

     

    Is it possible at all to find out where the bottleneck is?  

    I'm not really sure about what else to look for.  It must be a hardware issue right?

     

    This is what connects the drive to the motherboard:

    A2_1__85506.1408271554.1280.1280.jpg

     

     

    This is what the underside looks like:

    IV5mzz5.jpg