There is no such thing as "SATA II drives", stupid
 

While the nice people at SATA-IO are right and while they might not like it, if you do a web search for "SATA II drive" on Froogle, you will find hundreds, probably thousands of sellers advertising kit as "SATA II hard drive". But that is wrong, very wrong. Even our resident guru Fudo committed the sin of using the "SATA II drives" moniker, once. I personally think he should face the heat, too.

http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=37254

Anandtech did a piece on this several years ago too

All this because the SATA comittee decided to changed their name to SATAII... and at the same moment introduced SATA 3GB/s to the public.

i'm quite sure the marketing jockeys are more to blame ;)