SATA or SATA II inside?

Question

What type of connection does the internal drive of the iMac (late 2006) have? I have the 24" 2.16GHz.
I've already talked to Geek Squad (Apple Authorized - no voided warranty) about upgrading the drive. They have Mac Specialist in their stand-alone stores.
I just want to make sure I buy the right drive that goes in.

Answer 1

Nick Rooney wrote:
What type of connection does the internal drive of the iMac (late 2006) have?
I have the 24" 2.16GHz.
The internal SATA bus on that machine runs at *1.5 Gb/s* and uses +"an AHCI 1.1+
+controller that supports advanced SATA-II features ..."+
[iMac Developer Note -- Late_2006 white C2D|http://developer.apple.com/documentation/HardwareDrivers/Conceptual/iMac0609_SuperDrive/Articles/MiMac_arch.html#//appleref/doc/uid/TP40004827]
The terms "SATA I" and "SATA II" are frequently misused and are NOT the same as bus
speeds. SATA II drives are required to operate at either 1.5 Gb/s or 3.0Gb/s -- and a
properly designed SATA controller will auto-negotiate the speed.
Althouh I've never seen an explicit Apple confirmation, I'm 99% sure that the Intel AHCI
controller chips used in Intel iMacs will negotiate bus speed correctly, i.e., they will not
require a 1.5 Gb/s speed-limiting jumper on the drive. (Note: some drives are shipped
with the 1.5Gb/s jumper installed, but it would probably be best to remove it.)
By now, vitually all large-capacity SATA drives are capable of 3.0 Gb/s -- but will
work perfectly well at either speed. They're often advertised as "SATA II" but that's
really a misnomer, according to the SATA-IO standards organization:
http://www.sata-io.org/namingguidelines.asp
BTW, the 6Gb/s SATA standard is slated for release in the first half of this year...
http://www.sata-io.org/SATAIO_Newsletter122007.htm#NextGen
...eat your hearts out, Firewire 3200 and USB 3 fans!
Looby