Whats the difference between SATA133, SATA150, and SATA2?

[Orionxx]

And does it really make a difference?

 

[Nodsu]

SATA133 does not exist. You must be thinking of ATA133 which was the last of the old ATA hard disk interface. SATA150 or just SATA is the current desktop HD interface standard and SATA2 is the next generation.

Not it doesn't make a real difference, the only thing is that there is no point in investing in old technology (ATA) especially if you plan to upgrade sometime in the future.

All the real performance bottlenecks are in the drive mechanics, not the interface speed. Look at seek times and sustained transfer rates of drives.

 

[Rick]

SATA 150 = About 1.2 Gbps
SATA 2 = About 3 Gbps

But as mentioned above, no drives take advantage of speeds even close to either of these numbers...

 

[Orionxx]

Awesome thanks, so what does it mean when a motherboard has "PATA: 2 x ATA 133 up to 4 Devices" and "SATA: 4 x SATA 150"?

 

[Nodsu]

It means you have two ATA ports that let you connect up to 4 ATA devices and four SATA ports giving you four SATA devices.

 

[Anthonym]

Just bought a 500GB SATA2 hdd, but it's not working. When plugged in it stops my other 200GB SATA drive working. Motherboard is K7Upgrade-880. This motherboard does not say that it supports SATA2, but one assumes that it is backwards compatible. Do I need to update the firmware/software for the SATA Controller, or am i going to have to get a new board....

 

[Nodsu]

You can try a new BIOS. Also, see the new hard drive happens to have a jumper to force it to SATA150 mode.

You can always buy a cheap non-RAID PCI SATA300 controller card instead of a new motherboard.

 

[Anthonym]

Thanks for responding. Unfortunatly already checked for jumpers. Non there. That was my initial thought. A little uncertain updating the bios, as i have not done it before. Heard some horror stories. What the process, how long does it take, and what are the chances of screwing it up?

How cheap is cheap??

If it helps this is the HDD.
http://www.aria.co.uk/Products/Comp...500Gb+IBM-Hitachi+SATA2+16MB+?productId=26078

 

[Nodsu]

With modern motherboards, it takes about a minute plus a reboot. If you happen to power off the machine during the update process or the chip happens to be faulty, you may end up with an unbootable machine.

Cheap as in you can get one for $30-$40. Just make sure it is SATA300.