Does SATAII need special drivers?

[Crypto]

Brand new to SATA here so please bear with me.

I'm about to get in to video editing and I've been told I need a big hard drive. I saw a nice WD SATAII drive 250GB at a reasonable price but I don't know if it will sit well in my existing rig.
My MB supports SATA but no mention of SATAII in the manual. Do I need a special driver? Will it sit alongside my WD 120 GB ATA drive OK?

Thanks

Crypto :smiles:

[Armo]

theres a pretty easy way ( but not fool-proof ) to see if your board supports SATAII.

SATAII ports have plastic around the outside of the port.
http://us.st11.yimg.com/store1.yimg.com/I/cooldrives_1883_8574997
see how there are black.. things...around the port? my english... failing.... the black.. things! THE THINGS!!!@!@

SATAI is only the connector
http://img.ezguide.co.kr/spec_img/boa/GA-81PE1000MK-SATA-Port-O.jpg

[Crypto]

So .... what you're saying is that SATAII is a hardware issue, ie the dreaded bits of plastic?

[ryko]

sataII just has extra plastic around the connectors to make it more secure. that new hdd should work just fine with your other one. you shouldnt need to install any extra drivers since you are just using it as a secondary device. don't worry about the sataII thing, it is compatible with sataI. hdd I/O is nowhere near the 300mb/s of sataII so the whole spec doesn't really make much sense ---besides NCQ.

[RWB]

I thought SATAII was backwards compadible, it would just run at SATAI speeds is all.

[GrayFox]

You may need to put a jumper on the drive to force standard sata modem if you don't have an nforce 3 or newer.

[Armo]

You may need to put a jumper on the drive to force standard sata modem if you don't have an nforce 3 or newer.

ive never seen jumpers on a sata drive

i misread the post, i thought it was "does SATAII need special drives"

sata II is backwards compatable with SATA 1, and a sata II drive will run at sata I speeds when connected to a sata I connector.