Sata HDD Jumper Limit Question

  • Thread starter Thread starter Gabriel Knight
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G

Gabriel Knight

Hi I have a Sata hard drive with a jumper to "limit to 1.5 Gb/s operation"
if the jumper is "in" the jumper block and without the jumper it is for "3
Gb/s operation"

I am using:

Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 - 250gig Sata HDD
Intel core2 Duo E4600 @ 2.4GHz
Gigabyte GA-P31-S3G Motherboard
Win XP Home SP3
Nvidia Geforce 8400GS PCIE 256mb

I have been cleaning this pc inside and out when I found this HDD jumper
setting, at the moment it is jumpered to "limit to 1.5 Gb/s operation".

Can I unjumper it to make it "run" faster with the "3 Gb/s operation"? -
would there be a problem with this?

Thanks and regards
GK
 
Gabriel said:
Hi I have a Sata hard drive with a jumper to "limit to 1.5 Gb/s operation"
if the jumper is "in" the jumper block and without the jumper it is for "3
Gb/s operation"

I am using:

Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 - 250gig Sata HDD
Intel core2 Duo E4600 @ 2.4GHz
Gigabyte GA-P31-S3G Motherboard
Win XP Home SP3
Nvidia Geforce 8400GS PCIE 256mb

I have been cleaning this pc inside and out when I found this HDD jumper
setting, at the moment it is jumpered to "limit to 1.5 Gb/s operation".

Can I unjumper it to make it "run" faster with the "3 Gb/s operation"? -
would there be a problem with this?

Thanks and regards
GK
Click to expand...

Sure. The jumper is typically needed when the drive is connected
to an older VIA chipset (VT8237). The VT8237S was the first Southbridge
from VIA, where the limitation was removed.

As far as I know, the Intel Southbridge ports can run at 150 or 300,
so you can pull the jumper for that.

The Seagate has two jumper positions (total four pins). One jumper
controls Force150, the other Spread Spectrum. The Spread Spectrum jumper
might be needed on a certain older Macintosh computer, otherwise isn't needed.

To see the impact of Force150, you can look at my results on an Intel Southbridge
here. The charts compare "jumper in" versus "jumper out". Sustained transfer
rate isn't materially affected. The burst rate gets a nice boost, but
does that really help ? (Since pulling the jumper is "free", of course
you can do it, but if you expect a visible difference, don't hold your
breath.)

http://img829.imageshack.us/img829/842/500gb3500418ascomposite.gif

Paul
 
Thats extreamly helpfull - Thanks Paul

GK

Paul said:
Sure. The jumper is typically needed when the drive is connected
to an older VIA chipset (VT8237). The VT8237S was the first Southbridge
from VIA, where the limitation was removed.

As far as I know, the Intel Southbridge ports can run at 150 or 300,
so you can pull the jumper for that.

The Seagate has two jumper positions (total four pins). One jumper
controls Force150, the other Spread Spectrum. The Spread Spectrum jumper
might be needed on a certain older Macintosh computer, otherwise isn't
needed.

To see the impact of Force150, you can look at my results on an Intel
Southbridge
here. The charts compare "jumper in" versus "jumper out". Sustained
transfer
rate isn't materially affected. The burst rate gets a nice boost, but
does that really help ? (Since pulling the jumper is "free", of course
you can do it, but if you expect a visible difference, don't hold your
breath.)

http://img829.imageshack.us/img829/842/500gb3500418ascomposite.gif

Paul
Click to expand...
 
Gabriel said:
Hi I have a Sata hard drive with a jumper to "limit to 1.5 Gb/s
operation" if the jumper is "in" the jumper block and without the
jumper it is for "3 Gb/s operation"

I am using:
Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 - 250gig Sata HDD
Gigabyte GA-P31-S3G Motherboard

I have been cleaning this pc inside and out when I found this HDD
jumper setting, at the moment it is jumpered to "limit to 1.5 Gb/s
operation". Can I unjumper it to make it "run" faster with the "3
Gb/s operation"? - would there be a problem with this?
Click to expand...

Read the manual or online specifications for your motherboard. Does it
actually support SATA 2 (3GBps)? You don't mention a SATA daughtercard
so presumably the only SATA ports you have are on the motherboard.

http://www.gigabyte.us/search/search.aspx?kw=GA-P31-S3G
http://www.gigabyte.us/products/product-page.aspx?pid=2676#sp

What does it says for SATA support (for speed)?

Who put together your computer? They should've matched the settings on
hard disk with the mobo. Was the SATA disk perhaps migrated from an
older computer? If so, maybe the older computer only supported SATA-1
and whomever migrated the disk forgot to change the settings on the disk
when put into the new computer.

You might want to benchmark your SATA disk before and after making the
change to SATA-2. HDTune is free (but only benches the read speed, not
the write speed). You can use http://www.passmark.com/products/pt.htm
for a 30-day trial.
 
Mark said:
Note that even if the disk doesn't go any faster when operating at
300MB/s, you still might get a big speed if you are using a port
multiplier and have more than one disk on the same port.
Click to expand...

To be honest, I never heard of a [SATA] port multiplier before. I had
to go look it up.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_multiplier

In the past, I've always bought motherboards with enough or extra SATA
ports or used SATA controller daughtercards.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816215155 $39

While it says you can have up to 10 hard disks connected to this port
multiplier, you'd think they're all sharing the same bandwidth of one
controller. Depends on whether the muxer uses command or FIS switching
as noted in the Wiki article.
 
Mark said:
Note that even if the disk doesn't go any faster when operating at
300MB/s, you still might get a big speed if you are using a port
multiplier and have more than one disk on the same port.
Click to expand...

To be honest, I never heard of a [SATA] port multiplier before. I had
to go look it up.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_multiplier

In the past, I've always bought motherboards with enough or extra SATA
ports or used SATA controller daughtercards.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816215155 $39

While it says you can have up to 10 hard disks connected to this port
multiplier, you'd think they're all sharing the same bandwidth of one
controller. Depends on whether the muxer uses command or FIS switching
as noted in the Wiki article.
Click to expand...

Port multipliers aren't for speed. They're for mounting plenty of
storage cheaply.
 
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