Hi Bodidleysquat,

SATA and SATA2 are the equivalent of UDMA100 and UDMA133 with just a few
differences. SATA2 is a faster interface capable of transferring data at
speeds of upto twice that of SATA. As well as that, SATA2 also supports other
features, such as 'Native Command Queueing (NCQ)' providing that the hard
drive also supports it. Like the old E-IDE interface, the SATA interface is
very adaptable. If you use a drive with a higher transfer rate than the
interface it will default to the slower rate of your interface. Likewise, if
you use a drive with a lower transfer rate than your interface then your
interface's transfer rate slow down to match. This is because the interface
transfer rate is the theoretical maximum rate. Being electro-mechanical
devices, the actual raw data rate to and from the hard disk platters
themselves is only of a speed equivalent to 33-66 Mb/sec. It is the design of
the drive, its rotational speed and the size of the buffer, that makes them
seem faster.
Dwarf

"Bodidleysquat" wrote:

Are SATA and SATA2 like what USB1.1 and USB2.0 used to be? I mean does the
motherboard have to support SATA2 even though you already have SATA
connectors on the motherboard? If not and one wanted to install a SATA2
harddrive on their computer, would you have to do a motherboard BIOS update?
Or would you have to by a seperate card for SATA2, like I had to buy a
seperate USB2.0 card with my old computer? And my last question: Is there a
setting in say Device Manager to tell if your motherboard does support SATA2?