What is the difference between SATA-150 and SATA-300

[Deaf Spacker]

My latest external HDD crapped out and I've decided to go back to using an internal drive to use as a secondary/back up drive, my motherboard has six SATA connectors and each connector supports SATA-150 or SATA-300. What is the difference between the two? I'm guessing SATA-300 is fairly new and faster? Futhermore how do I know whether a drive is SATA-150 or SATA-300?

And lastly, does anyone have any hard drive recommendations based on what I've just asked?

Sorry for all the questions but I cannot afford to throw money away on something to find it's incompatible with my computer :/

Thanks!

[inactive]

for the most part just get a hard drive that supports SATAII (3.0gb/s) and you will be good.. i would say just find whatever size you need at a decent price and thats that. as far as performance im sure there all (the 7200rpm's) roughly the same.... although in general Seagate is probably the best overall brand as it has a 5 year warranty vs the other guys 3 year warranty's

usually to get the most storage for the money... find a hard drive around the 100 dollar mark ;) ... i usually buy all my pc related stuff from newegg.com as they usually have a good selection and pretty solid prices.... and there reputation is great if u happen to have to return a item if it's DOA.

good luck.

[Lasker]

Sata 150= 1.5 Gbit/s transfer

Sata 300= 3.0 Gbit/s transfer

You can use both at the same time, any combination without problem, different connections with different ports, for example use sata 150 in your sata 300 or sata 300 in your sata 150.

Edited November 29, 2007 by Lasker

[Deaf Spacker]

Thanks, the master hard drive that came with my PC is referred as a 3G hard drive in the documention so I guess that means it is SATA-300 or SATA II?

n00b question coming up :blush:

Do most hard drives come with the cables etc?

[devHead]

My latest external HDD crapped out and I've decided to go back to using an internal drive to use as a secondary/back up drive, my motherboard has six SATA connectors and each connector supports SATA-150 or SATA-300. What is the difference between the two? I'm guessing SATA-300 is fairly new and faster? Futhermore how do I know whether a drive is SATA-150 or SATA-300?

And lastly, does anyone have any hard drive recommendations based on what I've just asked?

Sorry for all the questions but I cannot afford to throw money away on something to find it's incompatible with my computer :/

Thanks!

SATA-300 or SATA2 as it is also called is the newest technology, with a 3.0GB/s throughput, as opposed to the 1.5 of SATA1 (150)

If your motherboard doesn't support SATA2 (like my old one didn't) then you can either simply place a pin on the jumper of the drive itself, or your motherboard will automatically adjust for it (so you'll have the faster drive, but it will run like a SATA1).

However, I found that a SATA2 drive hooked up to a SATA1 socket on the mainboard causes major problems for Windows Vista. In fact, with the SATA2 drive hooked up to my other board, Vista would not boot (even from a different disk drive).

With the new board that I have, though, Vista works fine. Of course, if your running WinXP, you'll have no problems with the new drive, even if your mainboard only supports SATA150.

If you buy online, it will say what the specifications of the drive are, or you can look at the speed that it lists t as. The same goes with mainboards; most all newer mainboards support SATA2.

I recently bought a new WD-Caviar 500GB SATA2 drive, and it is incredible, and I got a very good deal on it. I've always trusted Western Digital.

[Colin-uk Veteran]

Thanks, the master hard drive that came with my PC is referred as a 3G hard drive in the documention so I guess that means it is SATA-300 or SATA II?

n00b question coming up :blush:

Do most hard drives come with the cables etc?

nope, you usually get sata cables with your motherboard though. and theyre usually only around ?3 ish to buy if you dont have any anyways.

Regarding brand, i'd go for western digital too, never had a problem with them:))

[ViperAFK]

I'm pretty sure no hard drives can really even exceed sata 150 speeds anyway.

[+Fulcrum Subscriber¹]

Seagate also has a model line for the 7200 RPM drives. The latest is 7200.11; it's very fast.

[Deaf Spacker]

It's all sorted :)

[kingofmyworld324]

Seagate also has a model line for the 7200 RPM drives. The latest is 7200.11; it's very fast.

I have the 320GB version. It shows up as only 279GB but it is seriously faster than my old IDE Western Digital. My motherboard only supports SATA 1.5 so it should be a little faster on 3. I say only a little faster because i hear that the speed difference between the two is not as big as it should be.

[leedogg]

if you want one of the fastest drives, go for the WD raptor w/ 10,000 rpm