[snip] 1. What difficulties (if any) might I expect in setting up the SATA drives? > A quick search found quite a few posts where people had to mess with the > BIOS, add a SATA driver, etc. with this motherboard. >
> 2. If I buy a SATA 3 GB/s drive, will this motherboard only give me 150 >> MB/s >> anyway? In that case maybe I should just go with ATA100 or ATA133. I >> assume either would work. >> > > Modern rotational devices don't even saturate ATA133, much less SATA-1, and > nowhere near the "SATA II"/3Gbps capability. Fortunately, SATA II drives are > backwards compatible. Some SATA 3 GB/s drives have a jumper for it to operate in 150 MB/s mode; most WD drives do. This along with enabling SATA support in your BIOS has worked for me. But yes, the mobo will limit you to 150 MB/s (if you even reach speed that as Ron mentioned). I have an old HP box that has SATA 150 support built into the mobo - no extra drivers needed, with XP or Debian. Not sure if this applies to your mobo but you may not have any work to do if SATA 150 is supported natively.
