This is the motherboard I have: My question is can I use any SATA hdd/ssd with this? ( as In SATA I, II, or III?) will a 6 Gb/s hdd work with 3 Gb/s motherboard?
51 Answer
Yes. By design, all newer SATA standards are backwards compatible with older SATA standards and will fall back to the slower speed such that they will work. So it doesn't matter whether it is a SATA 1 controller with a SATA 3 drive or a SATA 3 controller with a SATA 1 drive, or any combination with SATA 2 as well, they should all work together just fine.
The only exception in my experience is that some older SATA drives require a 3.3 volt supply, while most drives work fine without it. This is a power supply issue not a SATA version issue.
To clarify, a 6 Gb/s hdd will work with a 3 Gb/s motherboard, but it will only work at the slower speed. This is great if you want to go ahead and get some faster drives now and upgrade to a faster mainboard later. I have had no problems moving SATA drives between different computers.
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