SATA Drive connector question

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mtwalsh

n00b
Joined
Dec 19, 2009
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I'm building a rig from scratch. First time.. I got everything installed alright, but I'm used to ATA drives with ribbon data cables and molex connectors. Never installed a SATA drive. The model I got is:
WD Caviar Blue 500GB Serial ATA HD 7200/16MB/SATA-3G.

There is a connection via SATA cable to the MB, and a connection from the PSU with a SATA connection. On the far right side of the drive there is an 8 pin connector. I don't know what this could be for. Is this for a different type of connection? I though I only needed the data connection to the MB and power.

What am I missing here.

thanks for any advice

mtwalsh
 
I dont know what it is either..but all you need is the SATA data cable and a power connector....some drives have both a molex and a sata power....use one or the other, but not both...

EDIT: I just looked at one of my drives and I see what your talking about...no clue what its for , but you don't need to plug anything in there
 
As far as I know, the only time those are needed is to make a faster SATA drive act like a slower version. I, for example, had a SATA I mobo, but a SATA II drive. I placed a jumper over 2 of the pins and it became a SATA I drive as far as the system was concerned.

If all your parts are matched properly, you should never need those. (Again, as far as I know. Someone else may have better knowledge of alternate uses than myself though.)
 
Ok, Thanks/ I thought I was going nuts. come to thin of it Little_4nic8er made me think of someting. Maybe its for making a master or slave drive like the old ATA drives had.
 
mtwalsh said:
Ok, Thanks/ I thought I was going nuts. come to thin of it Little_4nic8er made me think of someting. Maybe its for making a master or slave drive like the old ATA drives had.
Click to expand...

No, there are no master/slave settings in SATA, since each device is on its own cable......nice try though..:)
 
Crosshairs said:
No, there are no master/slave settings in SATA, since each device is on its own cable......nice try though..:)
Click to expand...

Yah i thought about that right after I wrote it. Plus my gigabyte EP45-UD3P board has six SATA connectors & 2 extra. So I wouldnt need master/slave or /cable select. :)
 
Those are jumpers and/or diagnostic pins for techs to use. The only thing I've ever seen for an end-user to do with those is the "force SATA I" jumper that has already been mentioned. SATA is backward-compatible, so it shouldn't be needed most of the time, even if your parts' specs don't match. It's a compatibility mode for when there are problems (usually due to another part not properly supporting the standard).
 
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