New HDD with old MB

[Onelius]

Hello, everyone. i have a dell dimension 4600i desktop. it has 2 sata I ports, and i was hoping to buy a large HDD for more capacity. My understanding is that sata III HDD's will work fine in the sata I ports, but please correct me if i am wrong. My other problem is, will the MB be able to recognize all the space on the HDD (I'm looking at 1 TB+)? If not, how can i find out how much space my MB can recognize?

 

[phil22]

"(I'm looking at 1 TB+)"

ITB not possible. Maximum for the 4600i is 500GB

SATA II or SATA III hard drives are backwards-compatible with first-generation SATA ports, but will perform only at first-generation SATA transfer speed.

 

[Onelius]

"(I'm looking at 1 TB+)"

ITB not possible. Maximum for the 4600i is 500GB

SATA II or SATA III hard drives are backwards-compatible with first-generation SATA ports, but will perform only at first-generation SATA transfer speed.

what if i was to partition the HDD into two 500 GB partitions?

 

[Chicano]

The SATA III should work fine on the SATA 1 motherboard... the HD space is recognized by the OS after formatting the drive... if it has any trouble recognizing it, initialize the Hard Drive in GPT with the Disk Manager. Update the BIOS if problem persists.

Windows and GPT FAQ

How to Quickly and Easily Tell if Your Hard Drive is Formatted GPT or MBR

 

[Onelius]

Best answer selected by Onelius.