The SATA III drives are backwards compatible. If connected to a SATA II
motherboard, they run SATA II rates. If connected to a SATA III
motherboard, they run SATA III rates.
The only place a SATA III drive may cause grief, is if connected
to a VIA VT8237. Some of the VIA chipsets with SATA, they don't
handle negotiation well. If you use the "Force" jumper on a
SATA III drive, it jumpers down to the SATA II rate, rather than
the SATA I rate. And then, no matter what you do, you can't get
the SATA III drive, running with your older VIA chipset.
http://www.seagate.com/staticfiles/...ndmax20_and_21_installation_guide_sata_en.pdf
"Motherboards and host controllers equipped with VIA, VT8237, VT8237R,
VT6420, VT6421L, SIS760, and SIS964 do not support SATA 300 transfer
speeds."
(You can also try telling the drive to slow down, using the
programming interface. On drives that don't have a jumper block,
you use "Feature Tool" to set the rate. But you need a "good"
motherboard,
to interface to the drive, and do the setting operation. Example
of doing it this way, on page 22.)
http://www.hgst.com/hdd/support/downloads/FTool_User_Guide_215.pdf
But for most other chipsets (SATA I or SATA II), the negotiation
process, whatever it is, will work OK to establish working
conditions on both ends.
So if you have one of those older VIA chipsets, you'd likely
still be buying drives which don't aggravate that bug. And you'd
probably already be familiar with the issue, from trying to
use SATA II drives. The SATA III drive would be "more of the same".
On my VIA based motherboard, the Southbridge is VT8237S and that
chip is fixed. If I wanted to run a SATA III drive with that
chipset, it should work. The letter "S" after the chip number,
seems to make a difference.
Paul
