Remove Jumper on SATA II drives?

M

Milehigh

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jul 18, 2004
Messages
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My friend said that on the Seagate drives that you should remove the jumper from the drive to enable SATA II, otherwise, if the jumper is installed in default MASTER setting, the drive does not perform at SATA II levels. Can anyone confirm or deny this?

What is the best way to test or benchmark a drive to see how it is performing? Thanks...
 
SATA II drives dont have jumpers in that vein:
from Western Digital:The drive has a jumper block located next to the ATA power connector (see image below). There is generally no need to change the default jumper setting in order to use the drive. The only use of this jumper block is to enable or disable power management for the drive. The drives ship in the default position with the shunt on pins 1-2 (disabled). Alternately, the jumper can be removed completely with the same result. Placing the shunt on pins 3-4 (enabled), designates that the drive will power-up in standby mode. For most users the default position should be used.
 
From Seagate's knowledgebase, it says:

"To force the Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 drive to 1.5Gbits/sec mode, apply a jumper to the outer most pins of the jumper block."

It sounds like applying the jumber forces 1.5Gb/sec mode and removing the jumper allows for auto-negotiation of 1.5Gb/sec or 3.0Gb/sec operation.
 
It is my understanding that SATA drives don't use jumper settings. If a drive has SATAII support, and the controller does as well, it should automatically utilize it. SATA drives are logical, and there is no master or slave setting, it is just dependent on what port you plug it into on your controller.
On the most recent PATA drives that I have used, removing the jumper would just put the drive in cable select mode rather than the default master mode. The physical jumpers on the SATA drives now are probably just leftover from the old plastic molds. You should check the manual to be sure though.

[edit] guess I was close, but wrong [/edit]
 
7200.10 drives also have this jumper (as UICompE02's post describes for 7200.9s) and ship with it enabled. Remove it if you feel like it, but I have my doubts about it making anything faster.
 
ILAMtitan said:
It is my understanding that SATA drives don't use jumper settings. If a drive has SATAII support, and the controller does as well, it should automatically utilize it. SATA drives are logical, and there is no master or slave setting, it is just dependent on what port you plug it into on your controller.
On the most recent PATA drives that I have used, removing the jumper would just put the drive in cable select mode rather than the default master mode. The physical jumpers on the SATA drives now are probably just leftover from the old plastic molds. You should check the manual to be sure though.

[edit] guess I was close, but wrong [/edit]
Click to expand...


In theory, SATA drives shouldn't need jumpers for the speed negotiation. But it appears that enough 1.5GB/s only controllers had trouble negotiating the correct speed with devices that support both speeds that some drive vendors decided to put a jumper on the drives to force negotiation for the slower mode only.
 
I own a lot of Seagate SATA drives. They ship with a tiny little jumper block next to the data cable connector. The jumper by default is installed. This restricts the drive to 1.5Gb/sec. You need to remove this jumper to acheive 3Gb/sec.

I do not believe any other SATA drives ship with this type of jumper or default limitation.
 
As far as I know and from my experience with WD drives, SATA drives don't need jumpers. Even without the jumper, the drive will perform at whichever speed the motherboard supports.
 
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