SATA I and II and a Mac Pro

Zimbop · #1 March 10th, 2008, 11:00 PM

My Mac Pro manual says that the hard drives "must meets these specifications" - SATA 3GB/s (commonly called SATA II i believe). There's no mention of compatibility with SATA I - anyone know anything about that?

Satcomer · #2 March 10th, 2008, 11:24 PM

SATA 2 can slow done to SATA 1 speeds, I believe it is backward compatible. One question, why would want something slower?

Zimbop · #3 March 10th, 2008, 11:26 PM

I have a few SATA I hanging around the office - want to know if i can use them

Zimbop · #4 March 15th, 2008, 11:01 AM

really can't find an answer online about this one - would have through it would be ok but there's absolutely no mention of backwards compatibility - anyone actually using an SATA 1 drive in a Mac Pro?

Paul Pollock · #5 March 23rd, 2008, 08:31 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zimbop

My Mac Pro manual says that the hard drives "must meets these specifications" - SATA 3GB/s (commonly called SATA II i believe). There's no mention of compatibility with SATA I - anyone know anything about that?

OK, this is an excellent question. Firstly, while the SATA-1 port can access at 150-MB/sec, and a SATA-2 can access at 300-MB/sec, the drives are mechanically limited to around 80-MB/sec. The whole discussion becomes performance irrelevant in the face of these performance constraints. That's why raids are still popular even with a SATA-2 port <grin>.

I don't care which kind of port you have, the hard drives remain the slowest part of the drive subsystem <grin>.

-Paul