replacing hard drive with one that has faster interface speed

J

joemiami

Geek Trainee
Hi all, I found out this weekend that my WD 250GB 1.5/sec hard drive is dying(making alot of noise) and freezing my pc at times). I bought a new WD 500GB Caviar Black 6.0/sec hard drive. My motherboard (Intel 975xbx) maximum interface speed is 3.0/sec.

Do I have to use jumpers on the new WD drive to slow it down to match the mobo's 3.0 interface speed ? or will the new hard drive automatically bottleneck itself down to match the mobo ?

Thnx for your help
 
Wow, Caviar Black's are great. It's a good thing you didn't opt for the WD Green drives... i hear bad things about them left and right. Anyhow, smart investment.
Since your motherboard can only support SATA2, you can only use SATA2 speeds and not SATA3 speeds. Normally, your motherboard should automatically detect that your drive is SATA3 and your drive should bump itself down to SATA2 speeds. If you encouter trouble when booting up, then this detection most likely didn't happen. In this case, yes, you'll need to switch the jumper around to 3/sec to lock it at that speed.
 
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