Re: should I get SATA drives for old PC?
Steve Kleene <skdeb@syrano.acb.uc.edu> writes:
> Before I build a Lenny system on my 5-year-old PC, I want to replace the two
> internal hard drives. I'm not too swift with hardware specs and want to make
> sure I get the right drives. I will probably get 500GB drives and do not
> expect to set up RAID.
>
> The drives now are Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 8 6K040L0 40GB 7200 RPM IDE Ultra
> ATA133. There isn't much of a selection anymore with the ATA100 or ATA133
> interfaces; most new drives are SATA 3 GB/s.
>
> The motherboard is an Asus P4P800 Deluxe. It has two SATA connectors and
> came with the cables. The motherboard manual says, "The current Serial ATA
> interface allows up to 150 MB/s data transfer rate" (i.e. >133).
>
> So now to the questions:
>
> 1. What difficulties (if any) might I expect in setting up the SATA drives?
> A quick search found quite a few posts where people had to mess with the
> BIOS, add a SATA driver, etc. with this motherboard.
>
> 2. If I buy a SATA 3 GB/s drive, will this motherboard only give me 150 MB/s
> anyway? In that case maybe I should just go with ATA100 or ATA133. I
> assume either would work.
The standard is *supposed* to be backward compatible, and *should*
automatically negotiate the maximum speed that both can handle. Not
all chipsets handle that properly, so you may need to jumper the drive
to the reduced speed. I saw similar warnings about my VIA chipset, so
when I bought a new drive at a local shop, I specifically asked about
the jumper. They looked it up and gave me a copy of the jumper page
from the manual. I first tried without the jumper, and neither the
BIOS or Linux even saw the drive, but with the jumper it worked
perfectly. Some older BIOSs may not boot properly from SATA drives,
so you may need to keep the older drives for booting.
--
Carl Johnson carlj@peak.org
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