Is a SATA II hard drive completely backwards compatible?

[mshan]

I want to use two Hitachi 80 GB SATA hard drives on my Asus P4C800-E Deluxe rev. 2 in RAID-0 as a video editing storage array.

The SATA I 7K250 drives seem to be disappearing, though I see a lot of the SATA 7K80 drives.

Are these SATA II drives completely backwards compatible with older solutions such as the integrated Intel ICH5-R southbridge of my Asus P4C800-E Deluxe rev. 2 mobo?

Also, any difference in performance or stability?

 

[Dahak]

Yes, sata II is fully backwards compatible. It will run at sata I speed (150 vs 300) although i do recall right now there is not much preformace difference between the two anyway (someone could correct me if im wrong) aslo you will loose the ablility of ncq and hot swapping that sata II offers