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I have to buy a new HD, so I am searching for a new one. I opened my laptop and take a picture of my old one, it says "Serial Ata". In the specifications http://wdc.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/search/1/a_id/5391# (my HD is WD3200BEVT) it says Sata 3Gb/s.

Does it mean that my HD is SATA II?

Thanks, Oscar

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3 Answers

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Yes the transfer speed of SATA II is 3Gb/s. SATA I is 1.5Gb/s and SATA III is 6Gb/s. They are all interchangeable but you will only reach the transfer speeds that your slowest component supports (motherboard or drive).

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up vote 2 down vote

Yes, 3Gb/s SATA equal SATA 2

Longer answer with some background:

Currently there are three SATA standards:

 SATA 1, aka SATA 1.5GB/sec
 SATA 2, aka SATA 3.0GB/sec
 SATA 3, aka SATA 6.0GB/sec

In theory all devices are compatible. A SATA-2 drive on a SATA-1 controller should just work, albeit at a maximum transfer speed of about 130MB/sec. ( SATA-1 speed, and compensating for the overhead in the protocol and the encoding).

A single harddisk is not that fast and SATA-1 is still more than adequate for regular desktop usage.

Most SSDs are a lot faster and will be limited by SATA-1, for those you really want SATA-2 or 3. Another use for faster SATA speeds is with port multipliers and several harddiks on a single SATA link.

But, for normal desktop use: Everything should be interchangeable. A few are not and most of those have jumpers to fall back to SATA-1. (Essentially this means the firmware on the HDD is not up to snuff. It should not be needed).

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Thanks for the "extra" info. :) Even though you said SATA I is still mora adequate for regular desktop usage, I will go with exchanging the HD for a sata II HD to avoid any problems. tks! – Oscar Aug 10 '12 at 15:33
1  
No reason not to buy SATA-2 or -3. (Find a -1 in the shops might even be hard. And the last HDD I bought was -3 because it was faster and cheaper then then previous -2 model). – Hennes Aug 10 '12 at 15:35
up vote 0 down vote

Sandra lite will tell you. Run the program and under Mainboard, there is disc controller.

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