Question about SATA 3.0 HDD on SATA 1.5 computer

[mhendo]

I have a Dell Dimension 8300. It came with single 160GB SATA 1.5Gb/s hard drive. About a year later, i installed a second hard drive, a 160GB Seagate SATA 1.5.

Now, i want to pull the second hard drive out and put it in an external enclosure. Then, i want to replace it in the computer with a larger drive, probably a Seagate 320 or 500GB SATA drive.

The thing is that all the new SATA drives now are SATA 3.0, and before i order a new drive i want to be sure that it will work in my computer. According to the Wikipedia article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_ATA) on Serial ATA, the 3.0 drives should work on older 1.5 systems. But the Wiki entry and this Western Digital page (http://wdc.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/wdc.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=1337) note that there are a few motherboard chipsets that have trouble with the newer SATA drives, and need "jumper shunt" hardware installed.

Now, because i got my computer from Dell, i was never really sure even what the brand of motherboard in my computer was. I downloaded and ran the Belarc Adviser, which gives a list of hardware and software, and under the heading Main Circuit Board it gave the following information:

Board: Dell Computer Corp. 0W2562
Serial Number: ..CN4811144905PM.
Bus Clock: 800 megahertz
BIOS: Dell Computer Corporation A05 02/23/2004

I googled this stuff, but i'm still not clear about whether my motherboard will have any trouble running a SATA 3.0 hard drive.

Any advice would be most welcome.

[arseNal]

Can't give you a definitive answer, but a utility like CPU-Z (http://www.cpuid.com/cpuz.php) will tell you the actual chipsets on your mobo. Then you can compare it against the list of the known problematic ones found in your articles.

[mhendo]

Thanks.

I ran it, and my chipset doesn't seem to be one of the affected ones. Also, i had a look on Seagate's website, and according to them, you can get around the problem by switching a jumper on the HDD that will restrict it to SATA 1.5 transfer speeds.

I've ordered the hard-drive and enclosure now, so fingers crossed.

Thanks again.