SATA-2 Compatability

[satan]

I am going to be buying a new hard drive, and I was thinking in terms of the future, I want a SATA 2 drive, but I only have a motherboard that supports regular SATA. Are SATA 2 drives backward compatable with older SATA motherboards?

I understand that if they are compatable the drive will only run at regular SATA speeds, 150MB/sec.

Thanks.

[Tobeman]

As far as I know, I think they (some, not sure if all) include a jumper to allow for SATA compatibility, although that might have just been on a Samsung?

[mrbanana]

I got a Samsung SATA II 250 GB drive, set the jumper to SATA I, and it's fine on my ancient nforce2 mobo.

[user1453]

I bought a maxator maxline 3 recently, it is sata II and is working fine on my sata I dfi nf3 motherboard, it is in the sata 2 specification that sata II drives are supposed to be backwards compatable.

[Odc]

Are SATA II cables compatable with SATA I HDD's?

[Pdog]

Are SATA II cables compatable with SATA I HDD's?

Yup, I have the Samsung 250Gb which is a sata II drive. I am pretty sure they are the same. Using a standard Sata cable.

[Tobeman]

Tbh I think a SATA-II cable is one with the fancy clip on and thats it, no performance different, just a "stronger" connection i believe.

[Hans Voralberg]

There's no difference in the cable apart from the retention clip afaik

[user1453]

the connector was just made bigger and a clip was added to prevent the cable comming out