Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 - Backwards Compatible?

Tican · 4 Apr 2011 at 20:15

Hi there,

Just wondering if someone can help. I am looking at getting a new hard drive and my motherboard can only accept 1.5gb/s SATA-I not SATA-II.

Is the Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 1TB SATA-II 32MB Cache - OEM (ST31000528AS) [ST31000528AS] drive backwards compatible to SATA-I, or has anyone done this?

Cheers

Krislord · 4 Apr 2011 at 21:29

The SATA standard is backwards compatible. SATAII devices will work on SATAI ports at the reduced speed of SATAI.

rpstewart · 4 Apr 2011 at 21:52

Krislord said:
at the reduced speed of SATAI.

Which is still well beyond anything the drive is capable of.

The only problem which can crop up in this sort of situation is if the board is really old it may not be able to auto-negotiate the link speed with the drive. In the early days of SATA II drives this wasn't a problem, you either set a jumper or they shipped set to SATA I and you needed a software tool to kick them to SATA II.

Unfortunately both of these methods are rare these days so be warned...

Tican · 4 Apr 2011 at 22:16

Damn, it's an http://www.asrock.com/mb/overview.asp?model=4coredual-vsta if that's any use (an old board)

BlackBat · 4 Apr 2011 at 23:56

If your mobo. can't automatically detect the drive you should be able to manually switch it according to this combined with this.