Vostro 1500 - Seagate Momentus 5400.3 in bad shape

My HDD is performing badly and according to SpinRite I'm looking at 900+ hours of scanning/repairing.

Thus, I'm thinking of buying a new one. However, having one of the earliest Vostros that isn't SATA II, I'm wondering if I buy a SATA II drive, will it still be functional?

 

I'm pretty sure all Vostro 1500s should have a 965 chipset and the relevant Southbridge... and therefore native SATAII support. Even if I'm crazy and this isn't the case, you will still be able to use a SATAII (at SATAI speeds, of course) drive as the SATA standards are backwards compatible. If you buy a fast SSD, you may be bottlenecked by those SATAI speeds, but for any mechanical HDD, this shouldn't be an issue.

 

So are they only SATA I? I just assumed it was SATA II, didn't even think about it. I'm planning on getting an SSD for my Vostro

 

With SATA 1 (150MB/s) you won't get the full benefit of the faster transfer rates but you will get the benefit of the near -instant access times.

John