SATA Hard Drive Quick Question

[dragflameson]

Quick Question: I have a 1.5GB/s SATA hookup on my motherboard. The Hard Drive I want is a SATA 3.0GB/s Drive.

Can I hookup the 3.0GB/s SATA drive to the 1.5GB/s SATA hookup on my motherboard?

I'm assuming I can and the drive will just run at 1.5GB/s instead of 3GB/s?

[Midknyte]

Generally, yes. You may need to set a compatibility jumper on the drive.

There are certain drives that must be set to SATA150 by software, like the Hitachi 1TB drives.

[dragflameson]

OKay - Thank you :)

Are there PCI expansion cards that can do 3.0GB/s SATA?

[Midknyte]

There are PCI SATAII cards out there. Unless you are getting a 1TB drive with software config, then I don't see a need to buy another card. The PCI bus wouldn't be able to handle it anyway.

Remember, interface speed has very little to do with drive performance.

[dragflameson]

OKay I gotcha. I'll just run it at 1.5GB/s instead of 3GB/s then if it's not going to perform at 3GB/s anyways...

Thanks again :)

[Midknyte]

It's not even going to do anywhere close to 1.5GB, much less 3.0. You'd need to setup a RAID to get close.