SATA Hard Drive

I have a Dell PC that needs a new hard drive. It has a Maxtor 160 GB
SATA-150 drive in it. There is a Western Digital 320 GB SATA-300 drive on
sale at Best Buy I would like to get. Will a SATA-300 drive work where a
SATA-150 was? Or does your system have to be designed for SATA-300?

And what is SATA?

Thanks,
Brian

"diablo" <nomail@spam.not> wrote in message
news:ncKdnRyd9LEPPHXZnZ2dnUVZ_qOdnZ2d@giganews.com ...
>I have a Dell PC that needs a new hard drive. It has a Maxtor 160 GB
>SATA-150 drive in it. There is a Western Digital 320 GB SATA-300 drive on
>sale at Best Buy I would like to get. Will a SATA-300 drive work where a
>SATA-150 was? Or does your system have to be designed for SATA-300?

Have you checked Maxtors website to see if your 160GB drive is under
warranty? They'll even cross ship a replacement if you've got a credit card.

diablo je napisal:
> And what is SATA?

Serial Advanced Technology Attachment.

It's basically a technology used to connect a harddrive to a computer.
It differs form the previously devoloped PATA in the point that data is
now transfered from a chip on the motherboard to the disk and
vice-versa sequentially, rather than in parallel over several cables.

SATA also features more innovative technologies than PATA, but is less
reliable in lower-end and costum built computers, due to the fact that
the high frequency at which a SATA chip comunicates with the disk drive
is dependant on the frequency of the motherboard, thus any interuption
to this frequency from any source will cause the data between the chip
and the disk drive to be trashed, possibly resulting in physical damage
to the SATA disk.

For more info, here's a good article with pictures and details:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SATA

On Sun, 20 Aug 2006 13:53:21 -0400, "diablo"
<nomail@spam.not> wrote:

>I have a Dell PC that needs a new hard drive. It has a Maxtor 160 GB
>SATA-150 drive in it. There is a Western Digital 320 GB SATA-300 drive on
>sale at Best Buy I would like to get. Will a SATA-300 drive work where a
>SATA-150 was? Or does your system have to be designed for SATA-300?
>
>And what is SATA?
>
>Thanks,
>Brian
>


Yes, the -300 drive is backwards compatible though you may
need to use a jumper to set it to SATA150 mode. This should
be detailed in the instructions or on the label.

"kony" <spam@spam.com> wrote in message
news:pomhe25in4eb6d812pbq90ti3447lsj8aj@4ax.com...
> On Sun, 20 Aug 2006 13:53:21 -0400, "diablo"
> <nomail@spam.not> wrote:
>
>>I have a Dell PC that needs a new hard drive. It has a Maxtor 160 GB
>>SATA-150 drive in it. There is a Western Digital 320 GB SATA-300 drive on
>>sale at Best Buy I would like to get. Will a SATA-300 drive work where a
>>SATA-150 was? Or does your system have to be designed for SATA-300?
>>
>>And what is SATA?
>>
>>Thanks,
>>Brian
>>
>
>
> Yes, the -300 drive is backwards compatible though you may
> need to use a jumper to set it to SATA150 mode. This should
> be detailed in the instructions or on the label.
>
>

Thanks,