SATA III drives are compatible with SATA I port

[andynem]

Please, I have MBO Intel D865GBF with SATA I ports and I want to install a new SATA III Had Drive, can I do that? I mean, Do SATA ports on that MBO are compatible with SATA III Drives?

 

[John_VanKirk]

Hi Andy,

Welcome to Tom's Hardware!

Yes your SATA III HDD will work in the SATA I port, just at the SATA I 150 MB/s speed. Some of the older SATA II cards had a jumper to set for the slower speed but I doubt that your newer HDD has to be manually set on the back.

Later, when you upgrade to a faster MB with SATA III ports, your HDD will run at native speed, without a handicap!

 

[tecmo34]

SATA III drives are backwards compatible with SATA I ports. The device will run on SATA I speeds and not the designed SATA III speeds.

Your bigger concern will be with the capacity concerns, as older SATA I motherboards may not support drives over 1TB. I would double check to make sure your motherboard is capable of handling a larger drive (if that was your plan).

If you are looking at using a SSD, I would only recommend doing so if your motherboard supports AHCI in the BIOS. It is a benefit to the performance of a SSD to run in AHCI (though not a "MUST" however).