SATA II drive backwards compatible with SATA mobo?

[GreatGreen]

if i buy a motherboard with SATA support, but have a hard drive that is set up for SATA II, will these components be compatible?

also, is SATA II really that much of a better performer than SATA?

finally, if the mobo and HDD aren't compatible, would it be better to upgrade the MOBO to one which supports SATA II, or would i be better off downgrading the HDD to SATA?

thanks..

 

[BlkShdw88]

yes sata2 is backward compatible with sata1 motherboards ive done a few sata2's with sata1 boards and they are fine. There isnt a great deal of performance increase from sata1 but it is noticeable on benchmarks, but at this stage i dont think it would really matter what you get it will still be fast. Downgrade the hdd to sata1 if you can save money from it.

 

[Elbatrop1]

I second that. At this point in time, we are really only limited in hard drive performance by the actual mechanical part of the hard drive. Even 10k rpm HDs have a hard time filling the 150MBps bandwidth that a SATA 1 interface supplies.

 

[flyboychuckles]

SATA II is backwards compatable. I just bought two Hitachi 250gb drives that are SATAII and NCQ, but my mobo does not support that. I was just trying to future proof myself since my old PATA drives crashed. As far as performance I have a slight gain, but I think thats due to the better seek times on my new drives. One of these years HD technology will catch up to bandwith.

 

[Tyler1989]

Yes it is but you should get a SATA1 to save money because you are not using SATA2 speeds because your mobo is holding you down. You could also spend more on a mobo...

 

[flyboychuckles]

Most of the newer Mobo's support SATAII so you could get an average, new mobo for $120 or less. As far as the drives I did a search on Newegg for internal 200gb OEM drives and the prices range from $85 to $106 with all the differnt types mixed in. There were ATA100's that were more expensive than SATA150s and SATA150s more expensive than SATAIIs. My 250GB SATAIIs were $108.00 while the same drive using ATA100 was $109.51. Whether it's SATA150 or SATAII, neither use the full amount of bandwith available. So just get what you can afford and what has the features you want or will want.

 

[shdwsclan]

You could always raid0 2 sata drives together to increase data tranfere speed.

Higher RPM drives will only give you lower seek times.....

 

[Graham]

I am getting two of these:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822148065

For some reason the 250 GB is less than the 200 GB and at fifty cents a gigabyte you can't go wrong with seagate. In raid configuration these drive will install and load up significantly better than PATA.

The SATA II version is about $30 or $40 more. I forget but don't waste money on a hard drive claiming 3 GB/s actually being possible in current PCs.

 

[Tyler1989]

I always thought there was a SATA3 able to get 5GB/S speeds is that true?

 

[Tyler1989]

I am getting two of these:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822148065

For some reason the 250 GB is less than the 200 GB and at fifty cents a gigabyte you can't go wrong with seagate. In raid configuration these drive will install and load up significantly better than PATA.

The SATA II version is about $30 or $40 more. I forget but don't waste money on a hard drive claiming 3 GB/s actually being possible in current PCs.

I think I know why it's clear isn't it?

Serial ATA150 is not what you should be aiming for you want SATA2/3GB/s. It's possible and it exists not sure on actual performance but much faster than SATA1 which was 300MB/S if I remember. Also look at the cache it's 8MB if you search hard enough you can probably find a 16MB cache.