SATA or SATA II ?

worto03

Hi,

I've brought a PC with this drive in

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/ProductInfo.asp?WebProductID=235260

& I want to install a 2nd drive in it, after searching for sata drives on ebuyer it seems that there are sata & sata II drives ohw do I know which I need and whats the difference between the two?

Also can I put a sata II drive in as a 2nd drive if the origional drive is only sata which it may not be of course?

cheers for any advice I've only used IDE drives before,
worto.

BillScarab

That disc is SATA300 which is the same as SATA II. SATA is 150 Mb/s and SATA II is 300 Mb/s. So you can put another SATA II drive in. I'm pretty sure SATA II drives are backwards compatible with SATA anyway.

b33r

The difference between them is the speed of the drive and the speed the communication goes at.

Other hard drives arent an issue, what you need to know is wether your motherboard supports SATA2 or not. Some do, some don't, some will just use sata1 if a sata2 drive is used, some have a jumper setting.

Anyway there should be a model number on your motherboard somewhere, google that or post it here and you should be able to find out.

worto03

cool - I'll order a sataII drive then as my current one is a 300.

I didn't know that 300 was the same as II

Thanks guys.
worto.