Installing and Cloning SATA internal Drives

[indexster]

Hello again you Knights of Tech ! I have an easy one (just hardware) As some of you may have my read last post...
A high priority for buying a WD 500gb SATA II was because it's a 3.0 which is twice as fast my old SATA which runs at 1.5. Now I've got a somewhat fast drive BUT "the protocol" forces my new SATA II to drop to 1.5.

Ironically this Drive has a jumper to force the drive to the 3.0 speed. I've learned that the SATA protocols--in this case--DEPENDS on the SATA CONTROLLER (hardware?!) I have an older HP Pavilion a1224n.

Being a pessimist, I'm betting MY system's SATA Controller is a 1.5 AND CANNOT be upgraded to a SATA II because the OEM SATA Controller is soldered into the mother board. Please tell me I'm WRONG about this...and that I can buy a SATA II Controller ?! so I can run at 3.0?!

I'll go see if I can buy one--(not taking the plastic crack case off AGAIN until tomorrow)
Thanks

Dave In Atlanta

 

[dndhatcher]

You should be able to add a PCIE card SATAII controller. What I am not sure about is if you will be able to boot from it, which is kind of important to know.

 

[rwpritchett]

Also, just because your controller supports a faster speed does not mean that you will see any gains. Mechanical hard drives are just barely getting approaching the limit of SATA 150Gb/s.

Think of it this way, a car driving on a highway with a speed limit of 100 mph does not go any faster if the car is only capable of 50 mph. There is a bit of a performance gain when reading from the hard drive cache and some of the enhancements that are part of the SATA 3.0Gb/s spec, but there is no gain from read/writes to the platters.

 

[f4nt4sm4]

I remember when old motherboards just supported SATA I drives so if you installed a SATA II drive on it, the internal controller of the motherboard will recognize it for a SATA I. Still rwpritchett is right, the upgrade of SATA to SATA II is really not noticeable, blame the mecanical velocity of a HD (7200 RPMs).