Hi, I have a motherboard which only supports SATA II and I am going to get a 1tb HDD. Almost all of the HDDs appear to be SATA III nowadays. If I purchase a SATA III HDD will it be throttled to 3gb/s or will it just not work? Also, if you have any recommendations please post them. I am looking for the fastest speed at 1tb SATA. Thanks.
It will be throttled to Sata II speed, although a standard platter HDD will not be able to saturate a Sata II or III connection. You would need a raid array for that. For the fastest - look at Samsung F3 or F4, or the Western Digital Black series.
Sata III for HDD's is a gimic I am afraid, HDD's can't saturate sata 2 let alone get near sata 3. You only need to worry about sata 3 if your are looking at getting an SSD really
I'm no longer sure on which is the fastest 1tb drive, used to be the Samsung f3 would be recommended round here. A sata 3 drive will just run at sata 2 speeds and with a hdd you won't see any difference.
SATA1/2/3 are meant to be interoperable. In my experience it depends on the drive/disk controller combination. Some drives have jumpers that allow you to force the drive to a particular SATA version which seems to always work.
Hard drives can not take advantage of sata III so the connection is a gimmick. Just get the best/cheapest 1TB you can find that is reputable.
According to the charts at http://www.harddrivebenchmark.net/high_end_drives.html, the fastest 1 GB HD is currently the SAMSUNG HE103SJ (http://www.harddrivebenchmark.net/hdd.php?hdd=SAMSUNG+HE103SJ)
