Forum Home
Press F1
 
Thread ID: 73409 2006-10-18 03:45:00 SATA or SATAII Mike (15) Press F1
Post ID Timestamp Content User
492365 2006-10-18 03:45:00 I'm looking to buy a new HDD and I've found they're all SATAII rather than SATA - will this make a difference to me? My motherboad has a couple of SATA plugs on it. Can I plug a SATAII drive into a SATA plug and will it work normally?

Cheers,
Mike.
Mike (15)
492366 2006-10-18 03:50:00 Yes, but with decreased speed. :) pcuser42 (130)
492367 2006-10-18 03:58:00 Yes, but with decreased speed. :)
So it will be slow? Or just not as fast as if I was using SATAII? Would it be as fast as a standard SATA drive on a SATA plug?

Mike.
Mike (15)
492368 2006-10-18 04:15:00 yes, it will be as fast as a 'normal' sata drive... it's the 'stepping down' of the sata1 connector that's the bottleneck.

If you're getting a sata drive ones with NCQ (native command queueing) are even faster... basicly they 'queue up' the info in different parts of the drive and read it in sequence so that the drive doesn't have to seek as much. This 'speed advantage' will work with sata1 connectors I believe.

I've had 2 sataII ncq drives running in a raid array and they were fast Just using one by itself shows a decent improvement over sataI

Note that for a lot of stuff you do on your comp, more Ram would be a good option. If you're doing stuff that uses the HD a lot a sata drive will make a difference.
Shortcircuit (1666)
492369 2006-10-18 05:19:00 Assuming your motherboard only has SATAI, you probably wont notice that much difference in performance. Currently harddrives arent fast enough to fully utilize even the SATAI interface let alone the SATAII inferface. Most new drive gain their performance increases from the use of NCQ, which is unlikely your motherboard has if you dont have SATAII.

SATAII drives are backwards compatiable, so they can be used on a motherboard/chipset that only supports SATAI. Realistically you wont notice any performance difference between the two. But it really depends on what you use your PC for.
Pete O'Neil (6584)
492370 2006-10-18 07:42:00 only catch of useing sata2 drive on sata mobo is to make sure the drive is jumbered to sata, otherwise you may have booting problems. tweak'e (69)
492371 2006-10-18 08:04:00 Thanks everyone :)

Mike.
Mike (15)
1