Installing new HDD - few quick questions

fish99

fish99

fish99

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Joined
19 May 2005
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Hi,

Just got a new SATA2 Western Digital 250 GB hard-drive (WD2500KS) and I'm going to be installing it on an old motherboard without SATA2 support. I notice the drive has a jumper for 'SATA 150 only' operation, which is exactly what the old motherboard supports. Common sense seems to tell me I should use the jumper and limit the drive to sata150, would that be correct or doesn't it matter?

My other question - it's been ages since I've installed a new hard-drive - do you still have to use a boot disc and use fdisk to make a DOS partition then format the drive? Is there some easier way to do this nowadays from XP?

Cheers muchly,
Simon.
 
Figured out question 2. Using disk management in computer management to create a partition and format it. Seems to be working fine with the sata150 only jumper so I'll leave it on.
 
Btw if anyone can confirm that the drive would either not work, or not be faster if I removed the 'sata150 only' jumper, that would be very helpful.
 
If your SATA controller supports speed negotiation then the drive will work without the jumper, most modern chipsets will support this.

Even if your board supported SATA2 you won't notice a speed difference with or without the jumper.
 
Okeydokey, cheers, I'll just leave the jumper on. Is the extra bandwidth of sata300 not acutally needed on a 7200 rpm drive then? (i.e. the drive can't read/write fast enough for the bandwidth to matter)
 
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