Upgrading drives, questions about SATA

[arcooke]

I'm looking to upgrade hard drives very soon (my 80gb IDE drive is growing old).  From what I've seen SATA I (1.5Gb/s) is barely faster than ATA133 (1.33Gb/s, right?), whereas SATA II (3.0Gb/s) is more than twice as fast.

Of course I want to go with a SATA II drive seeing as how I plan to use the new drive for quite a while.  I looked at my motherboard specs (ECS K8T890-A) on the manufacturer's website, and it says the motherboard supports SATA 1.5Gb/s.  My motherboard is only several months old, and I'd hate to have to upgrade boards JUST so I can upgrade hard drives.  ECS has no bios updates including support for SATA II afaik.

So I have a few questions:
- What would happen if I tried using a SATA II drive on my motherboard?
- Is there such a thing as an adapter card that would allow me to use a SATA II drive on my system?
- If so, would using an adapter like that (if one exists), degrade performance of the drive?

All I'm trying to achieve here is to install a new SATA 3.0Gb/s drive and have it run at it's proper speed, preferably without having to spend another $100 on a new motherboard.

Any help would be appreciated!

Thanks,
Adam

[GX1_Man]

They are backward compatible so would run fine until you upgrade the MB (and there may be no burning reason to do that).

[arcooke]

Thanks for the reply.  I had read on wikipedia that they are backwards compatible... but that's all it really said.

Being backwards compatible only means it has to function the same as its predecessor as a replacement, working just as well.  It doesn't have to mean all the features in the new "version" have to be available.  

If I were to hook a SATA II drive up to a SATA I compatible board, since it's backwards compatible it should WORK just fine, but will it be able to achieve the higher SATA II speeds or will it work and be locked to the SATA I speeds?  My main concern here is the speed.  I don't want to spend the extra money on a 2nd generation SATA drive if I'm unable to get the better speeds I'm paying for.  If I have to upgrade motherboards to achieve that, I will.

Thanks again

[GX1_Man]

The function depends on the MB, not the drive.