PC Hobbyist
New Member
I have an HP Pavillion a250n (specs here, and mobo specs here).
I bought it in 2003 and have always only had IDE hard drives in it. Now, I want to replace these with a new SATA-II internal drive. As you see in the picture/link below, the mobo supports two SATA-I drives.
Here are my questions:
I bought it in 2003 and have always only had IDE hard drives in it. Now, I want to replace these with a new SATA-II internal drive. As you see in the picture/link below, the mobo supports two SATA-I drives.
Here are my questions:
- As far as I know, a SATA-II drive will work on a SATA-I mobo, but it will just run at SATA-I speed - correct?
- Do all SATA-II drives have a switch you flip to make them backwards compatible? Or are there some that are not backwards compatible?
- Am I limited on the size of the SATA-II I can use? I want to get a 1TB drive.
- Can I run my IDE drives and up to two SATA-II drives all simultaneously on my mobo?
- If I install XP on that PC, I assume I need to install RAID controllers during installation - or am I way off? I'll probably just have a dual-boot Vista and Win7 RC.