SATA 2

jdk · 14 Nov 2006 at 10:34

I'm needing another hard drive, I think my Shuttle XPC just takes regular SATA as thats what I have at the moment, but would a SATA 2 drive work in there too?

Alty · 14 Nov 2006 at 10:47

I'm under the impression that they would as they should be backwards compatible but bare in mind they will only run at 150mb/s and not the sata2 standard of 300mb/s.

33L · 14 Nov 2006 at 10:52

yeah it should be fine to run them @ Sata1 spec - usually there is a jumber on the drive to change it between sata1 and sata2

rpstewart · 14 Nov 2006 at 10:56

Yup a SATA2 drive will run fine. You may need to force the drive to run in SATA1 mode, normally this is done with a jumper on the back although Hitachi drives ship in SATA1 mode and SATA2 needs to be enabled using their feature tool software.

As stated you'll be limited to 150Mb/s but you'll not notice this restriction because current drives can't sustain a transfer rate anywhere close to that.

jdk · 14 Nov 2006 at 10:57

Great thanks, also - the SATA II drives seem to have 16mb cache, will that cache be usable using it in a SATA system or just 8mb like my other SATA drive?

rpstewart · 14 Nov 2006 at 11:01

The drive will use the full cache.