SATA 2 - Running at 1.5G/s

[HaZ]

I got a new pc, with a SATA 2 HDD. I was going to get a Maxtor SATA2, but they had just sold out. So i went with a Seagate SATA 2, which was on the pricelist as just Seagate 250G SATA, the guy at the shop assured me it was SATA 2. I recently checked the: Silicon Image ATA Controller in the Control Panel, which said that the Serial Link Speed was 1.5G/s.

Is there a way i can change that to 3G/s which i expected from the HDD? Is this really just SATA, not SATA II?

 

[zozzlhandler]

Look at the back of the drive - there should be a jumper. Take it off. Thats it.
(The documentation sheet that should have come with the drive should show this.)

 

[HaZ]

i have a window on my case so i can just look in to see it : ). The only things plugged into the HDD is a yellow cable - i think thats the ATA, and then a wider cable plugged just to the left of it (from a back Point of view). I don't know what you mean by a jumper.

http://www.oc.com.tw/article/0403/imgs/SEAGATE-SATA-003.gif

same as that but the red cable is yellow for mine

edit: link above

 

[elpresidente2075]

Jumper:

Thats blown up several times to get good detail.

 

[HaZ]

i haven't got one of those... i only have what the link picture i put has plugged in

 

[croc]

Perhaps the model # of what you received might help... Its usually on the label on top of the drive.

as to your picturl, there is a space for jumpers to the right of the 'skinny wire' that would have a jumper....

 

[pshrk]

I don't mean to go around correcting people, but from what i've heard there is officially no "SATA II" or "SATA 2" vs "SATA 1", apparently we are supposed to call them SATA 3G/s and SATA 1.5G/s instead.

1. 3G/s and 1.5G/s is the interface bandwidth. Don't worry about getting the interface to run at 3Gbps. 3G/s and 1.5G/s will not increase I/O performance for a single disk since the disk is much slower than even a 1.5G/s interface. The only real benefit of 3Gbps is for running large RAID arrays.

2. I am almost certain your drive has a jumper on it. It is very very small (about the size of a grain of rice) and fits over some very very small metal pins. Jumpers on hard drives are usually made of black or white plastic. Jumpers are not something obvious like a cable. They are usually "flush" with the back of the drive so they can be hard to see unless you unplug the cables and use a flashlight. Sometimes if they are badly designed you need to use needle nose pliers or tweezers to pull the jumpers off. Jumpers usually come off very easily, don't force it if your not sure.

3. I don't have any SATA 3G/s drives so I can't verify if taking the jumpers off will help you or not. But either way it doesn't make any difference since you won't see any performance increase with 3G/s. Go ahead and try it if you want to get your hands dirty.

4. Don't trust salesmen (maybe i should say salespersons to be PC... nah!). I have never seen a computer salesman that knows what he/she is talking about even slightly.

 

[HaZ]

thanks for all the replies, especially pshrk's explanation. I won't be going RAID just yet, and if there a no real benefits of doing it without another HDD i'll just wait until i definately need to.

 

[elpresidente2075]

There really are no bandwidth benefits, even with a two drive array. Only when you get to arrays of 5 or more does it start making a difference, as there are other features of the "SATA II" spec. that are made just for these types of environments.

And the location of this jumper would be right next to where you plug the SATA cable into it. There'll be several pins sticking out (not very far) inside of a little cave (for lack of a better word) and there'll be something like 4 or 5 pairs of these. Two of them will be jumpered together, and that is what we have been talking about here. It has been the advice of others to me to just not mess with this jumper, as it can have some nasty effects like destroying your hard drive or corrupting all the data that is on it.

Be assured, your harddrive is running as fast as it can, even without the added bandwidth. Download HDTach to see what I mean. The transfer numbers will not come close to 1.5Gb/s

 

[hergieburbur]

I got a new pc, with a SATA 2 HDD. I was going to get a Maxtor SATA2, but they had just sold out. So i went with a Seagate SATA 2, which was on the pricelist as just Seagate 250G SATA, the guy at the shop assured me it was SATA 2. I recently checked the: Silicon Image ATA Controller in the Control Panel, which said that the Serial Link Speed was 1.5G/s.

Is there a way i can change that to 3G/s which i expected from the HDD? Is this really just SATA, not SATA II?

Even if you succeed in doing that, your drive is not really capable of saturating the 1.5 GB/s link, let alone the 3.0 GB/s. There are a few drives that can saturate the 1.5 link. And there are no drives currently that can use the higher speed.

So I wouldn't worry about it too much.