SATA 2.0 backward compatibility?

[Rod Speed]

N.Morrow wrote

I have a 4 year old HP DV1738 laptop and I would like to install a
larger hard drive in it. The current drive is a Fujitsu MHV2100BH,
100GB, SATA 1.0, 1.5Gb/s. The majority of SATA drives available now are SATA 2.0 with 3Gb/s transfer speed. I can't
seem to find any information on the backward compatibility of SATA 2.0 drives.

They are mostly compatible.

I think that some drives have a jumper to restrict transfer speed to 1.5Gb/s but I'm not seeing that on all of them.

Yes, some do it electronically instead of with a jumper.

That can be a problem if you dont have something it works in to set it electronically.

It would be nice to be able to use a SATA 2.0 drive because of the selection available and low prices.

So, has anyone had success in replacing a SATA 1.0 drive with a SATA 2.0 drive?

Yes, plenty have.

Some do need to jumper the drive to 1.5Gb/s or set it electronically.

That always works if its needed.

 

[N.Morrow]

I have a 4 year old HP DV1738 laptop and I would like to install a larger
hard drive in it. The current drive is a Fujitsu MHV2100BH, 100GB, SATA 1.0,
1.5Gb/s. The majority of SATA drives available now are SATA 2.0 with 3Gb/s
transfer speed. I can't seem to find any information on the backward
compatibility of SATA 2.0 drives. I think that some drives have a jumper to
restrict transfer speed to 1.5Gb/s but I'm not seeing that on all of them.
It would be nice to be able to use a SATA 2.0 drive because of the selection
available and low prices.

So, has anyone had success in replacing a SATA 1.0 drive with a SATA 2.0
drive?

Thanks in advance,
N.Morrow

 

[Ed Light]

I would definitely look for one with a jumper. That insures that it will
work, unless one of those chipset incompatibilities happens. So make
sure it's returnable.

I used a WD 3.5" with its jumper in on an old desktop, and another on a
PCI SATA card.

WD is a good one to get.
--
Ed Light

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Thanks, robots.

 

[Arno]

I have a 4 year old HP DV1738 laptop and I would like to install a larger
hard drive in it. The current drive is a Fujitsu MHV2100BH, 100GB, SATA 1.0,
1.5Gb/s. The majority of SATA drives available now are SATA 2.0 with 3Gb/s
transfer speed. I can't seem to find any information on the backward
compatibility of SATA 2.0 drives. I think that some drives have a jumper to
restrict transfer speed to 1.5Gb/s but I'm not seeing that on all of them.
It would be nice to be able to use a SATA 2.0 drive because of the selection
available and low prices.

So, has anyone had success in replacing a SATA 1.0 drive with a SATA 2.0
drive?

Thanks in advance,
N.Morrow

In theory it should work. The standard requires it to work.
The jumpers are for early and buggy SATA chipsets/drivers
where it sometimes does not work. Modern drives are more
tolerant to these older implementation errors, so chances
are it will just work and the jumpers have (mostly?)
vanished. I never needed them.

Arno

 

[larry moe 'n curly]

I have a 4 year old HP DV1738 laptop and I would like to install a larger
hard drive in it. The current drive is a Fujitsu MHV2100BH, 100GB, SATA 1.0,
1.5Gb/s. The majority of SATA drives available now are SATA 2.0 with 3Gb/s
transfer speed. I can't seem to find any information on the backward
compatibility of SATA 2.0 drives. I think that some drives have a jumper to
restrict transfer speed to 1.5Gb/s but I'm not seeing that on all of them.
It would be nice to be able to use a SATA 2.0 drive because of the selection
available and low prices.

So, has anyone had success in replacing a SATA 1.0 drive with a SATA 2.0
drive?

I don't have one, but if it uses an Intel chipset, and I'm pretty sure
it does, it will handle SATA 3Gb/s drives fine. This is the case with
my Dell Pentium 4 Optiplex GX270 desktop, which is based on an older
Intel chipset. AFAIK, only older SiS and VIA chipsets (VIA VT6420,
VT8237, VT8237R, VT8237R+, VT8237A, but VT8237S and VT6421A are OK)
can't handle SATA 3Gb/s drives.

Seagate drives can be configured for 1.5Gb/s or 3.0Gb/s maximum speed
with a jumper, as can Western Digital desktop drives but not WD
notebook drives (WD notebooks can't be changed), while Hitachi and
Samsung drives require running a program to change their speed
limits.

 

[N.Morrow]

I don't have one, but if it uses an Intel chipset, and I'm pretty sure
it does, it will handle SATA 3Gb/s drives fine. This is the case with
my Dell Pentium 4 Optiplex GX270 desktop, which is based on an older
Intel chipset. AFAIK, only older SiS and VIA chipsets (VIA VT6420,
VT8237, VT8237R, VT8237R+, VT8237A, but VT8237S and VT6421A are OK)
can't handle SATA 3Gb/s drives.

Seagate drives can be configured for 1.5Gb/s or 3.0Gb/s maximum speed
with a jumper, as can Western Digital desktop drives but not WD
notebook drives (WD notebooks can't be changed), while Hitachi and
Samsung drives require running a program to change their speed
limits.

Thanks for the good information. I believe that this model of laptop uses an
Intel chipset to support a single core Intel processor. The frustrating
thing is trying to find the exact product specs on the hard drives. Even if
the spec sheet can be found, it often omits minor things like backward
compatibility of the interface. Admittedly, part of my problem is the age of
the HP laptop. It is performing well, so I don't have any reason to upgrade
it, but some of the interfaces aren't up to current standards (like SATA and
also the memory card reader which won't read SDHC). It seems like the only
course of action is to install a SATA 300 drive and see if it works.

N.Morrow

 

[Rod Speed]

Thanks for the good information. I believe that this model of laptop
uses an Intel chipset to support a single core Intel processor. The
frustrating thing is trying to find the exact product specs on the
hard drives. Even if the spec sheet can be found, it often omits
minor things like backward compatibility of the interface.
Admittedly, part of my problem is the age of the HP laptop. It is
performing well, so I don't have any reason to upgrade it, but some
of the interfaces aren't up to current standards (like SATA and also
the memory card reader which won't read SDHC). It seems like the only
course of action is to install a SATA 300 drive and see if it works.

Nope, the other option is to use a drive thats jumperable to both
standards so if it doesnt work initially, you can use the other standard.