How does SATA I and SATA II differ?

[Jayce]

I've done a search but to my surprise couldn't find much... can anybody tell me how they're different?

 

[Vybuni]

The only major differnce is the transfer rates. SATAII can transfer data about twice as fast as SATAI, but that extra bandwidth isnt being utilized. Two identical hard drives, one on SATAII and one on SATAI will both perform almost exactly the same.

 

[HAVOC]

The web guru of storage devices: www.storagereview.com

www.google.com
www.tomshardware.com
www.seagate.com

 

[Jayce]

Can they be used interchangably?

 

[Vybuni]

Yes, SATAII is backwards compatable, much like IDE drives. ie. and IDE133 will work with an IDE100 mobo. However, f you put a SATAII drive in a SATAI port, it will run at SATAI speeds.

 

[Nubius]

bandwidth is best utilized if the drive was a 10kRPM drive........buuuuuut yeah, doesn't matter if the cable can transfer a billion gigs at once if the drive can only write x amount of megs per second, which is why it's pointless to consider SATAII any better than I

 

[ulater6000]

Yes it is the transfer rate. SATA I transfers at up to 1.5 gb a second, and SATA II transfers at up to 3 gb a second.