What's the difference between SATA and SATA2?

Jonah1156

Hi there

I am in the process of purchasing an ASRock P4I65G from Ebuyer so would like to buy a hard drive from them to save postage. I'm a tad confused as to which sort of sata drive to buy as there's 2 versions of the SATA as described in the heading.

Is there a great deal of difference in those sort of drives and which one would be suitable for my soon to be purchased mobo? Would I benefit from getting an IDE drive instead even though they may be a tad slower in accessing the data. The new board do have SATA but only the older version as opposed to the SATA2 http://www.ebuyer.com/UK/product/119412/rb/24082748775

I would be grateful if someone out there can put me on the correct path so that I can go ahead and order it asap. The hard drive in question is:-
http://www.ebuyer.com/UK/product/102293/rb/24082792846

THxs

Jonah

esuhl

SATA2 has double the theoretical maximum transfer rate, but there probably won't be much (any?) difference unless you put the drives in a RAID array.

Also, I *think* only SATA2 has NCQ (Native Command Queueing). Have a look at the following links for more info:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_ATA
http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/device/storage/serialATA_FAQ.mspx

Jonah1156

Esuhl

Thxs 4 getting back to me.

So in essence I can go ahead and get a SATA2 and it will work on a board that supports just SATA drives as highlighted in my post?

Chippy_Minton

SATA, SATA 1, or SATA-150 (all the same thing) have a data transfer rate of 150 MB/sec, whereas SATA 2 or SATA-300 transfer at 300 MB/sec. However this is the transfer rate of the serial interface, not the drive itself which is a lot lower. A SATA2 drive will work with a SATA motherboard since the cables and connectors are identical.

Omertron

Depending on the controller for your drives you may have to force the drive into SATA-150 mode for the PC to recognise the drives. Check the drive's manual if you get issues after installing.

esuhl

My SATA2 drive has a jumper on the back (like the IDE master/slave jumpers) to switch between SATA1 and SATA2... I don't know if this is the same for all drives, though...