I fitted a second SATA HDD to my PC as a back up device. Given the fact that it had become noisy, and files were taking an extended time to open, I assumed that the drive was about to expire and removed it.

When looking for a replacement I found that most drives are described as SATA-III. The old drive was salvaged from an earlier machine and there is nothing to indicate what 'flavour' of SATA it is/was.
The motherboard is a Gigabyte GA-P55-US3L and the relevant part of the spec is here:

Chipset:

1. 6 x SATA 3Gb/s connectors (SATA2_0, SATA2_1, SATA2_2, SATA2_3, SATA2_4, SATA2_5) supporting up to 6 SATA 3Gb/s devices

GIGABYTE SATA2 chip:

1. 1 x IDE connector supporting ATA-133/100/66/33 and up to 2 IDE devices
2. 2 x SATA 3Gb/s connectors (GSATA2_0, GSATA2_1) supporting up to 2 SATA 3Gb/s devices
3. Support for SATA RAID 0, RAID 1, and JBOD

iTE IT8720 chip:

1. 1 x floppy disk drive connector supporting up to 1 floppy disk drive

Is it necessary to use a particular spec of SATA drive or will any variety be compatible with the main board?

Thank you in anticipation, Gentlemen.

N o t a

PS It is some time since I last bought a HDD and prices seem to have soared to horrifying levels.

SATA II defined a theoretical max transfer rate of 3Gbps.
SATA III increased that to 6Gbps.

Your board is SATA II (3Gbps)

You can connect a SATA III disk to a SATA II controller, although it will work at the SATA II controller speed.

The cables are the same as far as the physical interface size and shape are concerned, but some poor 3G cables might limit throughput to 3G even if you have a SATA III 6G drive and SATA III controller. SATA III compliant cables will have been certified to 6Gbps - but most decent SATA II (2.6) cables will work at the higher data rate anyway.

In your case, this isn't a problem (SATA II board).

SD

Thanks for that SD, I'm grateful to you.
All I have to do now is find a drive that doesn't cost an arm and a leg!
As mentioned, it is a while since I bought a hard drive and when looking at a well known online retailer's site, it seems that they all have huge capacity. I shall never use 320Gb let alone 500gb or 1Tb. It's not only MacDonalds who do 'Supersize' portions!

Thanks again,

N o t a

you're buying three / four months too late
The floods in Thailand last year have more than doubled the price of most hard drives, assuming you can get them
Supplies are limited and some wholesalers are rationing them

Ah, that explains it. I think that there might be an IDE drive or two in the spares box.
Make do and mend time, I think!

That's the trend .... bringing down the cost per GB and as a result being able to provide larger capacities as costs that you could have only dreamed of a few years ago.

Only certain brands and types are in short supply.... plenty of others around.

Western Digital for example don't seem to have much of a supply chain issue, their WD5000AAKX model (500GB) for example, is in plentiful supply and dirt cheap.

whats happening, is that with limited production capacity they manufacturers are only making the bigger drives - those they can make most money on
My usual supplier at present can't purchase any desktop drives of less that 1TB!

There do still seem to be a number of smaller sized laptop drives in the market at more sensible prices though


As for the Western Digi comment - you must be joking, or else you've found someone with a stockpile. They've lost around 70-80% of their production capacity.

Interesting, Have you bought any? Are the labelled as Malaysian or Thai?

I have been observing the cost of 1TB* 3.5" SATA disks over the last 3-4 months with the same supplier, and prices are undoubtedly on the way down again.

A WD 1TB disk that cost me £45 (ex. VAT) 18 months ago rocketed to over £115 (ex. VAT) in November 2011 and is now back to £70 (ex. VAT). Still considerably more than I would want to pay, but I intend to go for 2TB disks anyway for my next project.

I've noticed that a lot of vendors are showing this re-adjustment as a "sale" reduction.

SD

* because I've got a reference of a previous purchase