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I was looking around for an SSD. I found some SATA 3 drives, at the same price as SATA 2 drives. My motherboard however, can't handle SATA 3. Is there any way I can connect SATA 3 drive and get full speed? Possible through some hacks.

One hack I was thinking is for example some controller that will take one SATA 3 cable, then splits it into two SATA 2 cables, so i can connect it to my motherboard.

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It's worth noting that the official SATA spec states and real world tests have shown that SATA 1 cables do not slow down SATA 6Gbps connections. SATA 3 compliant cables have the extra feature of snapping in when attached so the (already small) chance they'll fall out is further reduced. – Theodore Murdock Apr 25 at 21:40
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You can use SATA3 drives on your SATA2 setup, but it will only run at 3Gbps.

If you want 6Gbps, you can buy a SATA3 6Gbps controller add-on card.

StarTech makes some, and I'm sure other's do as well.

Here's a NewEgg search for example.

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And this works when the motherboard does not support SATA 3? – Simon Verbeke Dec 10 '11 at 18:03
That's the point. :) Just make sure they offer drivers for your OS. – techie007 Dec 10 '11 at 18:11
Alright, thank you very much! – Simon Verbeke Dec 10 '11 at 18:15
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That will not work. Your best bet would be to get two SATAII drives and configure them in a RAID 0. This would essentially give you a max of 300MBs per SATAII port and a total of 600MBs bandwidth. Your OS would see the RAID 0 as one partition.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_RAID_levels#RAID_0

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I know that is possible, but it's to expensive - unfortunately. I guess I'll just buy the faster one, so I can use it when I get a SATA 3 compatible mobo. – Simon Verbeke Dec 10 '11 at 15:55
@SimonVerbeke: Two 64 GB SSDs do not cost much more than one 128 GB SSD. – Dennis Dec 10 '11 at 16:29
Have you looked into Z68 Motherboards? I'm getting SSD-Like speeds from a Raid 0 500GBx2 7200RPM with SSD Caching (Intel SRT) with a 128GB (64GB Cache). – kobaltz Dec 10 '11 at 18:07
All AMD parts here :) – Simon Verbeke Dec 10 '11 at 18:10
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