Seagate 1.5Gb/s >> 3Gb/S functionality help.

[themadmanrideson]

Building up a new system and my Seagate 80GB Barracuda 7200.9 SATA II (8MB Cache) has a jumper option to limit speed to 1.5Gb/s(when jumper is in place). Whenever I remove the jumper, trying to access the 3Gb/s range; the Disk Drive is either not recognized or hangs in the windows loading screen.

To be more specific: When trying to install windows the drive will hang in any formatting mode (quick or normal) and after installing windows using 1.5Gb/s config, removing the jumper causes the hang apon windows loading.

System:
-Seagate 80GB Barracuda 7200.9 SATA II w/ NCQ, 8MB Cache (x2) Currently in RAID 0 config to see if 3Gb/s would work.
-Gigabyte GA-M61PM-S2 Mainboard

My first guess would be the SATA Cables im using don't support 3Gb/s. Their the supplied cables from my Mainboard. (Yellow/SATA II)

Was also hoping someone could recommend a decent HDD speed testing software. One that would work for different Raid Array configs

Any Help or words of advice would be much appreciated!

theMadMan

PS If more system info or a better descrption of problem is needed, plz post.

 

[Grentz]

Hrm, I have never seen a jumper to select SATAII vs. SATAI (BTW, SATAII is 3 and SATAI is 1.5 that you see).

Are you sure it is not the lga compatibility jumper that limits the size?

Anyhow, there should be no worries running it the way it works as no single drive maxes out SATA I (1.5) currently and SATAII is more of a marketing thing at this point for single drives...

 

[GJSNeptune]

I'm running a SATA 3.0GB/s as my primary and I don't have a jumper on it. As far as I know, it's reverse compatible. It just simply won't run at 3.0 if the motherboard doesn't have that functionality.

Also, there's virtually no difference in cables. Any SATA cable will suit SATA II. Marketing.

 

[themadmanrideson]

Thanks for the responses! I have included some photos here to show the drive. Hopefully this will clear up any confusions about whether or not such a jumper exsists. My Mainboard does support 3Gb/s interface speed. As stated from the Gigabyte website (specs).

My understanding is it's possible to achive more then 150MB/sec (1.5Gb/s) but never the maximum of 300MB/sec interface speed.

I've run a Disk testing program called DiskSpeed and the Linear read was 129.6*** MB/Sec. Again a drive should be able to attain a higher speed with 300MB/s compatiblity.
http://www.benchmarkhq.ru/english.html?/be_hdd.html

The problem of why removing the speed limiting jumpers causes my system to either fail or not recognize still remains

Thanks again for any help you can offer.

theMadMan

 

[unhappy_mage]

Any Help or words of advice would be much appreciated!

What do you want 3gbps for? Those drives won't do more than 100 MB/s even in sequential transfers; 1.5gbps sata is 150 MB/s of user data. Plenty of extra room.

 

[Grentz]

What do you want 3gbps for? Those drives won't do more than 100 MB/s even in sequential transfers; 1.5gbps sata is 150 MB/s of user data. Plenty of extra room.

Exactly. Even the WD raptors, the fastest single SATA drives, only come with 1.5 as the 3.0 is just overkill for single drives.

I keep saying single drives as certain raid controllers and external units can use more than 1.5 when there are multiple drives involved.

 

[themadmanrideson]

Thanks for all the posts. Most suggestions about the purpose of using 300MB/sec got me searching and I found this resource that has answered my concerns about improving HDD performance.

http://www.storagereview.com/

Mainly this note from the FAQ: "5) Interface- in the end, a drive's interface (ATA, SATA, SCSI, SAS, etc) has little effect on its performance. Like spindle speed, an interface exerts its effects more through manufacturer and market positioning. Note that while SCSI drives are undoubtedly more expensive than their ATA counterparts, they are not necessarily faster for non-server use. In fact, the safe rule-of-thumb is that given equal spindle speeds, a current-generation ATA drive will be faster than a current-generation SCSI unit."

Thanks for eveyones input!

PS http://www.storagereview.com/guide/guide_index.html Great artical about HDDs.

 

[Grentz]

Glad we can help.

I can agree and disagree with the interface thing though. I noticed a huge difference between my SATA 7200RPM drive and IDE 7200RPM drive. Both of which are newer Seagates. But there is no diff between SATAI and SATAII as discussed earlier