SATA3 in a 2007 MacBook Pro? I have an aging 15" MacBook Pro from 2007:


Model ID: MacBookPro3,1
Model No.: A1226


In an attempt to squeeze a bit more life out of it, I've replaced the battery, upped the RAM, and I'm about to move to an SSD. BUT, I'm a bit stumped by what type of SSD to buy. MacTracker lists the specs for the hard drive as a "1.5 Gbps Serial ATA (SATA)". Interestingly, I've found that SATA2 and SATA3 drives are just as cheap as SATA (if not cheaper sometimes). 

Will one of these newer drives work? Will this old MacBook benefit from SATA2 or SATA3? Will it be worse off? Do SATA1, SATA2, and SATA3 all have the same connection type?
The drive will be bound by the speed of the technology in your computer. 1.5Gbps is fast enough for the cheapest SSDs money can buy, but anything better than that is going to saturate the bandwidth. You'll definitely see a performance improvement over an HDD, even with this limitation, but don't go buying a high-performance SSD.