sata 1 and 2 compatibility?

baldzone · 20 Aug 2008 at 11:00

I've got a sata 1 (I believe) motherboard (Abit KV8 pro).

Are there any issues I should be aware of when adding a sata II hdd to it?

Cheers

Balders

schumi84 · 20 Aug 2008 at 11:06

Nope, it will be fine, will just operate at the SATA I speed (150MB/s). There isnt actually a physical difference between SATA I and II, just a naming convention but that is besides the point.

On the hard drive, there is sometimes a jumper you take off to enable SATA II also.

baldzone · 20 Aug 2008 at 11:07

Thanks for that! That will save all of £3

semi-pro waster · 20 Aug 2008 at 11:13

Hold a second though, what drive are you planning to go for? If it is a Hitachi then they ship with the drive defaulted to 300mb/s which may not work with older motherboards unless you set it to 150mb/s on a second PC. Most will be able to auto-negotiate but it is a point to check anyway.

baldzone · 20 Aug 2008 at 11:29

I wouldn't personally touch a hitachi. Heard too many bad things about them whether justified or not.

I was looking at Western Digital mainly because of personal experience of never having one fail on me. After saying that I'm sure I can expect a few failures now!

semi-pro waster · 20 Aug 2008 at 11:37

Hitachi have been fairly decent for a long time now, not the fastest or quietest but not bad either, unfortunately they still seem to suffer from the IBM 'Deathstar' link. Western Digital should be fine for the auto-negotiation though.

rpstewart · 20 Aug 2008 at 11:38

semi-pro waster said:
Hold a second though, what drive are you planning to go for? If it is a Hitachi then they ship with the drive defaulted to 300mb/s which may not work with older motherboards unless you set it to 150mb/s on a second PC. Most will be able to auto-negotiate but it is a point to check anyway.

Samsung's F1s are the same but worse - they plain don't work with certain older controllers.

2 mins and I'll dig out the link