SATA II VS SATA

[Ronbo13]

Hi guys. Anyone still out there? All I've seen is old posts about SATA and SATA II drives. My question is that I have an Asus P4C800E Deluxe, and it has SATA and can run Raid 0 - 3 (I think, I know it runs several numbers of Raids). I want to buy a huge new drive to use the old puter as a mega storage device for my wireless laptop and tablet. In the descriptions I see SATA, SATA II, & SATA III. I saw in the thread that SATA II will run with a SATA board and cable. What about a SATA III. Seems the larger drives run III. I've only seen a few that are SATA compatible but the max size is 500Mb and 5400rpm. Any suggestions? I don't want to pay an exorbitant price for something that isn't backwards compatable.

Thanks,

Ron K.

 

[PhilFrisbie]

The new SATA drivers are backwards compatible. The real issue is if your BIOS will support a huge drive.

 

[John_VanKirk]

Hello,
That's an older MB with a Northwood 478 chip with a SATA port & probably Win-XP on it. As Phi mentioned, the SATA drives are backward compatable so a SATA II or SATA III will work.

If in the future you might upgrade to a newer computer, purchase a SATA III 3.5" HDD that work with the newer SATA III 6Gb/s ports on the newer motherboards and Win-7 or Win-8. There is no penalty in speed or configuration in choosing the most recent SATA version.

There are 1TB and 2TB drives that will work with your MB, up to the 2.2TB Win-XP OS limit.

Here is a really a nice WD Caviar Black (hi speed) 1TB HDD on Amazon for $58, can't beat that. 2TB are about 3 times as expensive.
Western Digital WD Caviar Black 1 TB SATA 6 GB/S 7200 RPM 64 MB Cache Internal Bulk/OEM 3.5-Inch Desktop Hard Drive

 

[Ronbo13]

The new SATA drivers are backwards compatible. The real issue is if your BIOS will support a huge drive.

According to Asus, the MB should support a 1TB drive, "as long as it's not lavish," whatever the heck that means.

Is there something specific I should look for in the Bios? I am pretty fluent in screwing around with the Bios, just don't know where to look to see if it can handle it.

Thanks,

Ron K.