Are SATA HDD's and a SATA II HDD's interchangeable on SATA II supported mobo's?

Question

I've been told SATA II HDD's are twice as fast as the first generation SATA HDD, is this true?

Will a SATA HDD (not SATA II) work in the following motherboard?

PATA 2 x ATA100 up to 4 Devices
SATA 3Gb/s 5 x Internal SATA II
1 x External SATA II on Back Panel
SATA RAID RAID 0/1/0+1/5
Additional RAID Controller Sil 3132

And why do we need RAID? How is it used and why would anyone want to use it?

Answer 1

SATA II is faster but painful to get going at times.

IDE / ATA drives run at 100meg bus half duplex plus over head = like 46 meg / sec thruput-ish

SATA 1 has a 150 meg bus and ends up more along the lines of 70 megs /sec

SATA 2 has a 300 meg bus and ends up around 145 megs / sec

RAID is when you use multiple drives as if it was 1 drive. It gives you the ability to have multiple read and wite heads going at the same time speeding up data read / write times.


The SATA 1 protocals or backwards compatablie with the ATA set.. The SATA 2 is not.
Software bottom line, So far I dont know of any XP version that has SATA protocals in it, you have to install special drivers to get those fuctions to work. So since SATA 1 is backwards compatable with the ATA protocols you dont have to install the special drivers to get it to work in windows but your wont get the full speed if you dont.
SATA 2 is not backwards compatable so just to get windows to reconize the drive you have to have the SATA 2 drivers loaded and its more of a pain.

Hardware bottom line, if it doesnt say SATA II is supported on the motherboard its not and the windows part is a moot point =)

This is all kinda of a fast, simplified, gloss over of it all and the numbers could be off a little but its close enough to answer your question.

Answer 2

yes, they ar interchangable. SATA transfers at 1.5GB/s and SATA ll transfers at 3.0GB/s. unless you do serious gaming or something that needs a good hard drive, the SATA will work fine. if you plan on buying a SATA ll (i recommend it) i would suggest the Western Digital Caviar SE 16 250GB. you can get it from newegg. it has a 16MB cache instead of an 8MB cache so it will transfer twice as much from the HDD to your mobo in one pass.