SATA Drive Upgrade

[fraso]

I have a PC with ASUS P4P800S-X motherboard and I would like to add a larger hard drive. It works fine but the 160 GB IDE drive is pretty much at capacity. The board's user manual states that the current serial ATA interface allows up to 150 MB/s data transfer rate. My understanding is that I can use a SATA2 (3 Gb/s) drive with this board if I select the 1.5 Gb/s jumper.

However, only SATA3 (6 Gb/s) drives seem to be commonly available and the local computer shop tells me that they've had success with using SATA3 drives in similar boards in the past. I thought SATA3 drives only had 3 GB/s jumpers. The Seagate Barracuda Product Manual mentions "speed autonegotiation" but doesn't go into details.

I was thinking about getting a 500 GB SATA drive and using the 160 GB IDE drive for backups. Any advice?

 

[RiceCake]

You can use any drive, its all backwards compatible. The jumpers are because older SATAI hardware sometimes failed to comply with SATAII drives, but all SATAIII drives are fully backwards compatible with everything but the most arcane hardware.

The jumpers are only important for very specific situations that you're unlikely to encounter.

 

[Donald]

Originally Posted By: RiceCake
You can use any drive, its all backwards compatible. The jumpers are because older SATAI hardware sometimes failed to comply with SATAII drives, but all SATAIII drives are fully backwards compatible with everything but the most arcane hardware.


His MB sounds pretty arcane!

 

[RiceCake]

Just saying, I have a SATAI (1.5) PCI board that I've thrown every combination of drives on without issue, even without setting the jumpers if avaliable. Its unlikely you'll need the jumpers as most hardware autonegotiates everything.

 

[fraso]

Thanks! I know the board is a bit old but it works fine for what I'm doing. The local computer shop has a 500 GB Seagate Barracuda on sale for $55 until Friday and I can reuse it when I replace the board.