Newbie
Could any one tell me the difference between SATA, SATA II, SATA 150 and SATA 300.
I need to replace my hard drive and I am not sure which to look at my current drive is a Maxtor 7Y250M0
¨*·.¸ «.·°·..·°·.» ¸.·*¨
Double data transfer rate.
The question is whether or not your motherboard supports SATA I or SATA II.
SATA II drives do have a jumper to reset to SATA I in case your board does not support SATA II.
SATA (I) = SATA 150 (or 1.5)
SATA II = SATA 300 (or 3.0)
...
Last edited by jephree; 28-12-2007 at 11:50 PM.
Full Member
That pretty much said everything. If you're looking for opinion on which to buy then you have to look at the sata 2 drives with the jumper for limited transfer speed to sata 1. That way if you want to put that drive into another computer the jumper has to get removed.Originally Posted by jephree
Newbie
Thanks for that, just being really silly how do I find out if the system board is SATA 1 or SATA 2
UK site moderator
As the drive that you are trying to replace is an IDE drive, the chances are that your motherboard doesn't have either SATA or SATA2 capabilities. The easiest way to check is probably just to lift the side of the case off and peer inside (switch the PC off first and try not to touch anything unless you have grounded yourself to prevent static discharge!). Your current hard disk is plugged into an IDE port on the motherboard via a fat ribbon cable. SATA and SATA2 are quite different to IDE - they use much narrower cables and the ports on the motherboard are much smaller (although still rectangular) - they'll usually be labelled SATA0 and SATA1 or SATA1 and SATA2.
If you can't work it out by looking inside, then you might like to run the D-A-L.com Hardware Scan to identify your motherboard and then Google the motherboard's model number to find the technical specs for it.
Hope that helps
Full Member
Or if your computer was custom built you can look on the motherboard box and see if it says sata capable or to the company website.
