Tom's Hardware > Forum > Storage > Hard Disks > Is there a hard drive jumper that limits my hdd to 1.5 Gb/s?

Is there a hard drive jumper that limits my hdd to 1.5 Gb/s?

Forum Storage : Hard Disks - Is there a hard drive jumper that limits my hdd to 1.5 Gb/s?

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steve252   09-28-2008 at 02:51:25 PM

I just bought 2 WD Caviar Black 1TB hdds. I remember reading somewhere that there are jumpers on 3Gb/s hdds which limits them to 1.5Gb/s. Do my drives have these jumpers on them? I didn't see anything before I installed them. If they are there where are they located and what is the easiest way to remove them?

Thanks

-steve

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nukemaster   09-28-2008 at 03:00:10 PM
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Legacy power is not there anymore, but those jumpers control it's 1.5 abilities(last picture). If you have no jumper(some drives come without one), look for a spare one with your motherboards accessories or just head to a computers store they will tons.

 

http://support.wdc.com/images/kb/sata.gif

 

http://wdc.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/wd [...] ed=#jumper


Message edited by nukemaster on 09-28-2008 at 03:04:10 PM
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Codesmith   09-28-2008 at 11:47:20 PM
- 1 +

A new drive isn't going to set to 1.5. So you have nothing to worry about.

The setting is there just in case you are using a non-compliant 1.5 SATA controller which can't handle 3.0 drives.




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Camikazi   09-29-2008 at 12:17:36 AM
- 1 +

actually alot of Seagate drives come jumpered for 1.5GB, least all of my 7200.11s did, had to remove the jumper to get 3.0GB setting. Dunno about WD drives though.

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nukemaster   09-29-2008 at 01:21:29 AM
- 0 +

Codesmith wrote :

A new drive isn't going to set to 1.5. So you have nothing to worry about.

The setting is there just in case you are using a non-compliant 1.5 SATA controller which can't handle 3.0 drives.


Good point, I thought the OP wanted 1.5 for a older board.

By default its set to 3, no worries there.

------------------------------ http://i33.tinypic.com/sw3a5y.png
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http://tinyurl.com/5v55wk - C2 Mem performance? http://tinyurl.com/6pmbke - SLI/Xfire?
http://tinyurl.com/yfmxdc9 - Part Guide?
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Codesmith   09-29-2008 at 01:43:41 AM
- 0 +

Hmm I now that I think of it I haven't ever purchased or let anyone else purchase a SATA Seagate.

I started boycotting them when they charged me $26 for an dvance replacement RMA when Western Digital offers the same service for free.

...

Anyone actually measure the performance of a 3.0 drive before and after limiting it to 1.5?

It shouldn't it be like lowering the speed limit from 300 to 150 when your car can only do 90 down hill?

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cjl   09-29-2008 at 02:14:30 AM
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It'll change the burst rate, but have very little impact on true performance.

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Codesmith   09-29-2008 at 06:12:41 AM
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Yeah its like the car in my analogy can also travel at the full 150 or 300 mph but only for the first 10 feet of any trip. Then its stuck at its normal speed.


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croc   09-29-2008 at 06:45:56 AM
- 0 +

steve252 wrote :

I just bought 2 WD Caviar Black 1TB hdds. I remember reading somewhere that there are jumpers on 3Gb/s hdds which limits them to 1.5Gb/s. Do my drives have these jumpers on them? I didn't see anything before I installed them. If they are there where are they located and what is the easiest way to remove them?

Thanks

-steve



HD's are measured in MB/sec... If you can set something up that totally utilizes 1.5 GB / sec, then please let me know... (10 velociraptors in raid 5 might come close...)

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steve252   09-29-2008 at 07:43:07 PM
- 0 +

Camikazi wrote :

actually alot of Seagate drives come jumpered for 1.5GB, least all of my 7200.11s did, had to remove the jumper to get 3.0GB setting. Dunno about WD drives though.




That's what I read in the reviews when I was buying hdds. I wasn't sure what the OPs were talking about because they said they didn't know about it and it was very hard to find and remove.

My hdds are in RAID 1 so I know it wouldn't really have an impact on performance but it was something I wanted to know.

Thanks

-Steve

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Sad Panda   10-19-2008 at 08:11:47 AM
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croc wrote :

HD's are measured in MB/sec... If you can set something up that totally utilizes 1.5 GB / sec, then please let me know... (10 velociraptors in raid 5 might come close...)



1.5Gb / sec = 1500 Mb /sec = 187.5 MB :bounce: / sec (B = bytes |||| b = bits )

Fastest Actual Hard drive Read? 141.7 MB / sec (Seagate Cheetah 15K.6 )

So in theory it could help burst preformance

Reply to Sad Panda
croc   10-19-2008 at 08:57:03 AM
- 0 +

I knew as soon as I made that post that I had the wrong case for the b.... But I'm a lazy SOB, and had other things to do, so didn't edit...

Does Seagate now make a cheetah in SATA format?

Anyway, back to practical matters.... I was bored one evening, so tested my 150 GB Raptor with HDTune then tested a Seagate 7200.11. I saved the results. Raptor is definitely a bit faster overall, but most so in small file reads / writes where the access times actually make a difference.

Then for grins, I re-did the tests with the 150 jumper installed.

No real diference...

Two things I learned.... 1. Either modern SATA controllers ignore the jumper settings, or (more likely) current drives cannot saturate the bandwidth in 150 mode. 2. Raptors are really not worth the money...

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falconjack   12-27-2008 at 05:22:02 AM
- 0 +

New drives can YES come with the 1.5GB/s limitation jumper ON.
That happens because there are 2 standards for SATA:
-Sata (or sata1) which is the know 1.5gb/s
-Sata 2 (3.0gb/s)

What happens is that older motherboards with old sata1 ide controllers will NOT DETECT and sata2 hdd, thats why they usually come with the jumper on.
Once SATA hdd's dont have any slave/master jumpers, because there is always only one hdd per channel, simply REMOVE ANY JUMPER IN THE HDD
but take care, i'm talking about the jumpers located in the same part where the cables come in, dont try to remove anything of the HDD circuit board.

However, the extra speed provided by the 3.0gb/s can only be used between motherboard IDE controller and HDD cache memory, once the disks never can get that speed.
Even the newer Seagate 1.5tb disks have an internal speed of ~140mb/s.

rodrigo.andrade@ufrgs.br

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