Hi, I've been looking all over the place for this info; its one of those things probably everyone takes for granted.  I want to INSTALL new hard drives. My motherboard has 3 free sata sockets. Can I  connect sata2 drives to them, and if so will they work at the sata two data transfer rates? I want to install tascam's Gigasampler3 which streams music samples from the hard drive rather than loading them into ram, so I need  sata drives  with 9ms or less av. seek time & 8mb cache,  ( Yes, I can get sata1 drives that will do this but they,re not cheap, [like I am]!).

If its relevant, I'm running xp on a packard bell imedia 1559, 2.8ghz, 1gb, (soon to be 4) ram

Thanks. You need to check which SATA version your motherboard supports. If your motherboard doesn't support SATA2, then you need to check with your disk manufacturer. Some SATA2 disks have a jumper setting to work with SATA boards, they will then operate at SATA speeds. Other SATA2 disks may not work with a SATA board.The other option would be a SATA2 ADDON CARD...yep,thanks , all. Am trying for motherbd info now, but not LISTED on manf's web site;.  so its wait &  see  if they respond to emails. Sata2 card sounds  good  if no luck with manf. DLoad and install Everest Home and save a report to a text file and post the top 1/3 here...
It will tell you more than you need to know about that machine.yep, hopefully this post will actually get through. Anyway, report attatched.

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