Are 6Gb/s SATA ports on the newer motherboards backward compatible like USB 3.0 is with USB 2.0? I’m eventually going to purchase either an Asus Crosshair 4 Formula or a MSI 890FXA-GD70 motherboard.
I need to know if my two Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 1TB hard drives will work in these motherboards’ 6Gb/s SATA ports. I won’t be using any RAID configurations. The first drive is for Windows 7 64-bit and programs. The second is going to be for the Documents, Downloads, Music, Photos, and Videos folders.
Also, when are 6Gb/s SATA hard drives for desktop computers going to be available?
—Keith Brooks
Yes, 6Gb/s SATA ports are backward compatible; you can run 3Gb/s SATA drives just fine on them. There are several 6Gb/s SATA drives on the market, including the 1TB WD Caviar Black WD1002FAEX, Seagate Barracuda XT 2TB, and the latest 600GB and 450GB WD VelociRaptors. Crucial’s 256GB C300 SSD runs on 6Gb/s SATA, as well. Aside from burst speeds and some alleged NCQ benefits, there’s not much to gain from running mechanical hard drives on SATA 6Gb/s. Some solid state drives, on the other hand, benefit immensely—3Gb/s SATA tops out at about 240MB/s, while the Crucial C300’s average read speeds on 6Gb/s topped 300MB/s. Not shabby!
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