DarkSerge Posted April 27, 2015 Share Posted April 27, 2015 Greeetings. I'm in the early planning stages of building a new system as my current system is aging and slowly failing. I currently have 2 SATA hard drives and they have only been data drives without ever having an OS installed: a 1 TB SATA 3 and an older 200 GB SATA 1.5 It's been a long time since I've worked with new hardware, would a modern system support these older drives? I can easily migrate all my files onto the 1 TB drive and use the 200 GB drive as my OS system drive. For the time being, I'm trying to figure out what resouces I have already that'll fit into a new system. I'm know it won't be peak performance, right now I'm just looking to make a system that works instead of peak performance. I prefer to keep my data (music, movies, documents, etc.) on a drive seperate than the drive with the OS. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
V.T. Eric Layton Posted April 27, 2015 Share Posted April 27, 2015 In most cases, I've found that I can use older SATA hardware with newer motherboards. However, older SATA is slower (transfer rate), so it will not be able to utilize the faster transfer speeds of the new mobo. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_ATA#Backward_and_forward_compatibility 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DarkSerge Posted April 27, 2015 Author Share Posted April 27, 2015 Alright. I'm mostly curious about compatibility. I'm not as concerned with performance as I am a working computer. Either way, my current system is much older and even a new system running on old SATA drives will still be faster. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Capt.Crow Posted April 27, 2015 Share Posted April 27, 2015 While I can not be concise . I have been putting old scrap together for years now and rarely found any problems with the "mix + max" approach. I recommend that any old drive that will take an os >booted and suited is a good base to work from . Slave up the least important drive ,and check it is ok with what you want to do . After that you may boot and suit that one , set to master > then if ok keep on truckin" till you get where you want to be . Keep us informed as you go . We will all learn a little bit more Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DarkSerge Posted April 27, 2015 Author Share Posted April 27, 2015 One of the systems I'm looking at comes with a 500 GB drive installed, and it seems to be a pretty good deal. So it might not be so important, but it's good to know. Even if it's a bit older, I'd hate for a perfectly good drive to sit around though. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Capt.Crow Posted April 27, 2015 Share Posted April 27, 2015 The first check should be that the Bios finds it .Just tread softly step by step . Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DarkSerge Posted April 28, 2015 Author Share Posted April 28, 2015 (edited) It'll probably be a while until I actually acquire any new hardware, I've done some searching online for parts but before I get anything there's two computer stores downtown here that I'm going to look into as well. Edited April 28, 2015 by DarkSerge 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
V.T. Eric Layton Posted April 29, 2015 Share Posted April 29, 2015 Take your time. Haste makes for expenditures that usually aren't necessary. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abarbarian Posted April 29, 2015 Share Posted April 29, 2015 The two drives mentioned in the opening post should work perfectly with your new kit. If you can afford a ssd for your os , even a small one ie:60GB, or a very cheap one, then you will see a marked improvement in your computing. The older SATA drives would then be useful for storage. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
burninbush Posted April 29, 2015 Share Posted April 29, 2015 The two drives mentioned in the opening post should work perfectly with your new kit. If you can afford a ssd for your os , even a small one ie:60GB, or a very cheap one, then you will see a marked improvement in your computing. The older SATA drives would then be useful for storage. Yes, second that advice about the drives; they are up/down compatible, and so is a faster NIC. I would just advise about a new mobo; buy one that has usb3.0 and SATA 6gbps and a gigabyte ethernet port. The newer usb and sata parts are much faster than usb2 and sata 3gbps, and the NIC is 10x faster -- though you won't likely see much difference on a home lan, unless you move big files to another computer with a gigabyte NIC. Good luck with it. I'm just today scavenging files from my 2nd desktop that has a mobo that appears to be in the process of failing. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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