SATAII HDD

[CSULB71]

I have an Abit NF7-S mobo that supports SATA I (1st gen. 150 MB/sec) hard drives. Can I use a SATA II 300 MB/sec hard drive? If so, will it just run at the slower 150 MB speed?

[neomaine]

csub71,

You may have to put a jumper on the drive to force it to 150MB. I have to on my ABIT AV-8.

[edDV]

They are backwards compatible but the jumper stops the test for 300MB/s and forces 150MB/s saving boot time.

In practical terms there is no difference in sustained transfer speed for ATA133, SATAI and SATAII (~50-90 MB/s)* since this is limited by the rotational hardware, not the interface. Servers benefit from SATAII because much of the transfers are from the disk cache not directly from the drive platters.


* 10,000-15,000 RPM Raptor drives can reach 90-150 MB/s sustained but they sound like jet engines.

[CSULB71]

I thought they probably were backwards compatible. Now I can expand my candidates for a replacement drive. Thanks.