WD hard drives jumper settings and SATA 1.5 Gbps limit

WD hard drives jumper settings and SATA 1.5 Gbps limit

Hard disk jumpers where a necessary nuisance in the IDE/(P-)ATA days. Not having the necessary jumper or not knowing their proper placement made the difference between a functional hard drive and one not getting recognized by the computer.

Fortunately, jumpers disappear in the S-ATA age. Well, almost…

Early SATA controllers had peculiar ways of functioning so manufacturers implemented failsafe/compatibility options in their later generation drives to make sure these newer drives are still usable on old boards. And they did this – yes! – using jumpers.

While totally unnecessary in everyday life, jumpers still need fiddling on modern S-ATA drives in some very peculiar, abstract, out of the ordinary (read this as “on an ancient motherboard”) usage scenarios.

Below are the jumper positions on modern-day S-ATA Western Digital drives enabling various options – the most important of which is SATA Compatibility Mode:

wd-sata-jumpersThese instructions also apply to 3.0 (SATA II) drives, setting the PHY meaning they will be limited (downgraded) to SATA I (1.5 Gbps) communication.

 

And just to remember the past, here are the jumper settings for the good ol’ PATA drives:

wd-pata-jumpers

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