I see where someone recommended an SSD to help speed up a Mac mini but I do not know what an SSD is.
What's an SSD and what does it do?
Mac – What’s an SSD and does it help speed up a Mac
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Yes - at the moment - those link speeds are the theoretical maximum speed at which data can transfer to or from those devices.
The EFI firmware version on your MacBook Pro controls these link speeds as well as many other aspects of CPU throttling, so without reverse engineering that code - it's hard to know what or why the link may re-negotiate at a different speed. In the past, Apple has released EFI firmware updates to increase SATA link speeds for third party drives when they have done the engineering to make sure it will be stable enough - even if they don't support those drives. Of course they also release updates to improve their OEM parts in terms of speed and reliability so you can monitor those link speeds as well as your actual bottlenecks and submit bug reports if you feel things are not optimally configured - especially if you have some benchmarks or other data to show that case.
You can answer this question yourself by running Apple System Profiler/System Information and noting what it reports under the "Serial-ATA" column.
Here is what the report looks like on my MacBook Pro.
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Best Answer
SSD short for Solid State Drive is a recent evolution in hard drive technology. SSD's have many advantages over a conventional platter-based hard disk:
Improved read and write speeds: A typical SSD is multiple factors of times faster than a magnetic hard disk. This results in a much higher read and write speeds leading to faster overall user experience.
Much lesser chances of failure: There are close to no moving parts in SSD. SSDs is basically just an integrated circuit. This greatly reduces any chance of failure due to movement while in operation (common in traditional hard drive).
Unaffected by magnetic field interferences: SSDs are generally not susceptible to failure (compared to traditional platter-based drives) due to exposure to magnetic fields as there are no magnetic parts present. The core technology doesn't use magnetic state to store data.
Silent operation: SSDs are also dead silent while in operation.
Consume less power: Due to the absence of moving parts, SSDs consume much less power. Helpful when you are using a portable computer on battery power.
Since a hard drive's read/write speed is generally a major bottleneck in the overall performance of a computer system, it is recommended to upgrade to an SSD (if your computer supports it) to improve performance.
Mac minis were conventionally shipped without an SSD, so many recommend to replace the internal drive with a compatible SSD to see improved performance, especially when using data-intensive applications. Faster read-write also speeds up paging performance, thereby improving system responsiveness.
The current generation of Mac mini can be configured with an SSD while placing an order.