Upgrading Hard Disk from SATA to SATA 3 Drive

[nimrod08]

The time has come for me to wipe the hard drive and re-install Windows 7 following a recent disastrous download that's effectively knocked out my Internet Explorer 11 and rendered Internet browsing difficult. My system has since become unstable and progressively slow and unfortunately, for some reason, I am unable to Restore to any previous installation. As I have loads of files I want to access, I've decided get a new Hard Disk and run the original H/drive (if possible) from a SATA drive Docking Station. So essentially, I would like to know if my Dell DXC061 will run and support a new Seagate 1Tb SATA3 7200rpm Barracuda. My BIOS is Ver. 2.4.0 dated 05/24/07. I have opened the CPU to see that the current drive connectors appear similar to those on the SATA Docking Station and think my old drive will fit it. However, it's now occurred to me that its possible the newSATA 3 drive may not be compatible with my BIOS or Motherboard. Any help or comments please? Incidentally I have most of my most useful files backed up on an external drive, so all, hopefully is not lost.

 

[theog]

You need a SATA3 port to connect a SATA3 HDD to be fully compatible.

 

[TVeblen]

Also: SATA3 is backward compatible. Your new drive will run just fine on an older system with SATA2 ports, it just won't run at more than SATA2 speed.
If you can get a SATA2 drive cheaper than that's OK, but if you get the SATA3 at least it will be ready if you ever upgrade to a SATA3 system.

 

[nimrod08]

Thanks Theog and Eblem for prompt responses

 

[baumgrenze]

Thank you for the post and answers. Just what I wanted to know. I have a 6-year-old system (nice for its day) that I'd like to use a bit more. Sounds like it makes sense to buy SATA 3 drives to replace the now aging SATA 2 drives.

Am I correct that the extra $ spent on an SSD, say 500 Gb size, is overkill for a data drive for document, photo, sound file, and occasional video storage? Looking ahead is extra $ worth spending to get SATA 3 vs SATA 2?

thanks

baumgrenze

 

[ignatzatsonic]

Am I correct that the extra $ spent on an SSD, say 500 Gb size, is overkill for a data drive for document, photo, sound file, and occasional video storage?

A 500 GB SSD is $250 or thereabouts.

A 500 GB HDD is $55 to $75 or thereabouts.

You ask about "overkill". Well, you get to define the term.

It's not overkill if you don't mind at all spending the money. It's all a matter of your PC budget.The SSD is undeniably faster although you wouldn't often notice much difference on a data drive. The SSD might be more reliable.

Suppose the SSD is $190 more than an HDD. What else might you do with the $190? Buy a new monitor? That might make more of a noticeable day-to-day difference than an SSD data drive. Maybe a new processor? Ten decent bottles of booze?

 

[OvenMaster]

Depending on the hard drive, make sure you have a jumper handy in case you need to throttle down the new SATA 3 drive to SATA 2 speeds if your motherboard has SATA 2 ports. Not all drives will automatically throttle back, like TVeblen says.

I bought a new WD 500GB SATA 3 hard drive earlier this year and it performed very poorly on my SATA 2 motherboard ports.
http://www.sevenforums.com/hardware...ur-hard-drive-performance-75.html#post2711402

I installed a jumper to throttle down the hard drive to SATA 2 speeds and it works fine.
http://www.sevenforums.com/hardware...ur-hard-drive-performance-74.html#post2709453