Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 320GB

M

maximus1284

Limp Gawd
Joined
Feb 18, 2007
Messages
179
how do I enable SATA300 on these? I read that I have to remove jumpers to do this, I'm not sure that I did that though. where would these jumpers be? I bought them OEM btw, and I have no idea if I set up SATA300 correctly
 
Next to where you insert the SATA cable, remove the little plastic piece on the right side (use a small screwdriver or something similar) and the drive will run in SATA300 mode.

jumperqs4.jpg
 
I did not know that o_o
I've probably been running sata150 all this time.

I can just go home, take out the jumper, and turn on the computer just fine?
 
Yes, it should work fine. Let me know if you notice any difference :p
 
I too have been victim of this! I found out 3 months later when I was on newegg
 
Real world performance difference between SATA and SATA II are negligible, but you might see a bit of difference with these drives if you do a lot of large file I/O such as video editing.

And of course this depends on you having a controller capable of SATA II, if you don't the drive will fall back to SATA I mode anyway. The only reason they ship these drives with the jumper set to limit the unit to SATA I is for the broadest computability possible.
 
It's disappointing. So many of the so-called advances in newer drives (16MB buffer, SATA, and NCQ, for example) -- for desktop apps, at least -- amount to nothing or so close to nothing that it's still nothing. Well, they mean a lot to marketers.

So many people think they're getting extra speed out of SATA or SATA II (even relative to PATA), and unless we're talking some very particular app or a server, there just isn't evidence that I've seen that it makes a difference. The best 7200rpm drives these days regardless of interface top out at about 85MB/s, which even UltraATA/100 is capable of handling. Getting data off the spinning mechanical disks is still the bottleneck, so the fact that SATA II can burst over the cable retrieving data from the cache at upwards of 200MB/s is not exactly helpful when that limitation still exists.

At least there have been advances in areas like platter density that really DO make a difference in speed.
 
rseiler said:
SATA... for example
Click to expand...
Sata isn't all about transfer speeds, you know. Thinner cables make for better case airflow, hotswapping drives actually works by design rather than by coincidence, if lower-voltage electronics become desirable we'll be ready for them ahead of time, and on and on... It was no trivial endeavor to move to the new interface, and the industry didn't do so just for fun.
rseiler said:
Getting data off the spinning mechanical disks is still the bottleneck, so the fact that SATA II can burst over the cable retrieving data from the cache at upwards of 200MB/s is not exactly helpful when that limitation still exists.
Click to expand...
But when we get to the point that ATA/100 is not enough, we'll be ready. Imagine if the y2k bug had been fixed just enough that we had the same problem in 2100 :p And that point may come much sooner than you'd think - solid state devices are starting to hit their stride, and that will bring lower access times and almost certainly higher STR.
rseiler said:
At least there have been advances in areas like platter density that really DO make a difference in speed.
Click to expand...
Ah, but those tend to hurt seek times. There aren't many absolutes in performance of disks ;)
 
Took off the jumper and booted up.

Everything is 100x faster!

jk. No noticeable difference, but it's good to know :)
 
Well, considering that burst rates are now faster, I found that in 300 mode, the system was (at times, not often) a little bit faster. I did this with my brothers' machines, identical P4 systems, one with the jumper, one without. It was very slight (they didn't realize the difference), but I do feel that it was there.
 
rfisher983 said:
I too have been victim of this! I found out 3 months later when I was on newegg
Click to expand...

lol, thats exactly the same thing that inspired me to start this thread. I read it on newegg and wanted to make sure, only I've only had this PC for a week now :p
 
NjO said:
Next to where you insert the SATA cable, remove the little plastic piece on the right side (use a small screwdriver or something similar) and the drive will run in SATA300 mode.

jumperqs4.jpg
Click to expand...

so I just remove this? I don't plug anything into there?
 
ahh...now its just a matter of trying to remove them without having to take out my HDs...lol
 
Slightly OT:

Do the newer Seagate 7200.10 suffer from the "idle buzz" problems of their older drives?

I find it annoying that hard drives which are supposed to be very quiet purposely buzz for up to 30 seconds when they sit idle. Seagate calls it "self diagnostics" but I hate it! I have 2 older Seagate IDE drives, but I wonder if newer drives or SATA drives still do this. I like Seagate drives, but if they still make this noise I might switch to another brand of drives.

Thanks
 
maximus1284 said:
lol, thats exactly the same thing that inspired me to start this thread. I read it on newegg and wanted to make sure, only I've only had this PC for a week now :p
Click to expand...
I just briefly read through some of those messages on the ever-reliable Newegg boards, and they're pretty funny.

"Don't forget to loose [sic] the jumper for 3.0 speeeeedzzzzz!"

"Don't be stuck with slow 1.5 speedz, since 3.0 is twice as fast, and 1.5 literally cripples your drive."

OK, those may not be the exact quotes, but pretty much. Someone should submit them to snopes.com.

@MScrip: Nope, on a very new 7200.10, I ain't heard no stinkin' calibration buzz. I think any modern-day drive that attempted such a thing (audibly) would meet a quick death.
 
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