Sata

[supertech]

Hi,

Is the connector for sata 1 the same as the connection for sata 2, as I was wondering because when you look at a hard drive online, it usually says sata 2, but when you look at sata DVD-RW drives it just says sata.

I was wondering, so I could plug a sata 1 DVD-RW drive into a sata 2 motherboard.

Thanks

[Jonny2Bad]

Yes concerning dvd drives it doesnt matter.

[supertech]

So I can plug a sata 1 DVD-RW into a sata 2 motherboard?

[Coops]

SATA 1 / SATA 2 just refers to the generation of SATA Design. SATA 2 is faster than SATA1.

So therefore if your buy SATA 2 Hard Drive and plug in to SATA 2 Capable Mainboard then you get the best performance. However if you plug your SATA 2 Hard Drive in to a mainboard that only supports SATA 1. The drive will still work, it will just work at the slower SATA 1 speed.
This also works the other way around. For example pluggin SATA 1 hard drive in to SATA 2 controller. Drive will still run at SATA 1 speed.

Connector is the same.

So just plug that drive in as you would any other SATA Device. The controller will do the rest.

[system7]

So therefore if your buy SATA 2 Hard Drive and plug in to SATA 2 Capable Mainboard then you get the best performance. However if you plug your SATA 2 Hard Drive in to a mainboard that only supports SATA 1. The drive will still work, it will just work at the slower SATA 1 speed.

Funnily enough, when we did some SATA and IDE benchmarking here, most folks had neglected to remove the default SATA 150 slowdown jumper on their new hard drives, so were actually running SATA 1 bandwidth. That jumper is fitted precisely to avoid compatibility issues. Not that it made much difference. The performance hit on a single drive even with IDE interface is marginal, and relate to cache performance more than sustained data transfer rates. I believe Nova still fit WD SATA 150 drives in newer notebooks, for instance, which keeps costs down.

Some older motherboards built before the SATA 2 specification was finalised have issues with drives jumpered to SATA 300 speed. The Intel ICH5R controller built into some 865 boards is an example:
http://forum.novatech.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=25044&p=35166&hilit=SATA+865#p35166

I still buy IDE DVD drives, since they avoid some RAID issues on certain motherboards. None of this should affect you, supertech. I am just indulging my inner geek here. :lol:

[Nox]

yeah re the DVD/CD drives, there used to be serious 'just not compatibile' issues, but as long as you're sticking to modern chipset you'll be ok, probably :)

oddly, even though they dont reach the cap of IDE speeds, both my sata drives are way faster than my IDE ones. Probably just the brand though (Pioneer)

Nox

[supertech]

cool,

yh, I was just cheking the connectors were the same, also whre could I find the jumper for the sata limiter?

Thanks