HDD jumpers

Hello All,

I have a Clevo D900T variant computer running two SATA drives configured in a RAID.

I intend to replace the two SATA drives with two larger PATA drives. I have obtained the appropriate cable from the UK service department.

I notice that on one of the existing SATA drives there is a small plastic jumper. I suspect this is to identify this drive as either the slave or master disk, - I could be wrong about this.

How can I find out if a jumper is required on the new PATA drives and if so which pins should is go on?

The new cable has what looks like a parallel connector to connect to the row of pins on the PATA drive.

Any help will be appreciated.

 

As halo said, if you can then have the 2 drives on 2 different cables, but if you can't then have 1 master and 1 slave.

Also, SATA drives do not need master/slave jumpers as there is only ever one drive connected to the cable.

Without seeing the SATA drives I cannot say exactly what the jumpers were doing, but they were probably either enabling Spread Spectrum Clocking or limiting the size of the drives for older motherboards/OSes that cannot "see" larger drives.

 

Thanks Halo and Collinsl

This is a laptop I am talking about. I have no room for anything other than the cable supplied by the Clevo service people. Even then its so tight in there that fitting it is difficult.

The cable plugs into a single socket on the motherboard and then plugs into the two 2.5” SATA drives.

I have added a photo. Note the connections on the printed circuit. There are no other connections on the other side of the cable.

I don’t understand much of what you say about controllers. Does the picture help. Perhaps I don’t need jumpers.

http://forums.majorgeeks.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=138189&stc=1&d=1275146337

 

Right, this is where we are getting confused.

PATA is Paralell ATA, the old ribbon standard of hard drives. SATA is the new standard that your laptop uses. As they are SATA drives you should not need jumpers, although I suggest you contact Clevo direct to see what they say as it looks like it may be a non-standard setup.

 

Exactly,

The computer originally had SATA drives. I want to increase the HDD capacity, but I can't get large capacity SATA drives now. That is why I am changing to PATA and why I have had to obtain a different cable.

It looks to me that I should just plug them in.

Clevo did not raise any queries. The know that this computer has a RAID and although they were unsure about how big a HDD (500gb) it could handle they did not think I would have any problems using PATA.

I'm just attempting to be sure about things before I start to change things over and spend most of the next few days reinstalling the OS and the next few weeks getting everything back as I like it.

Will I have to change BIOS settings?

 

How are you connecting the PATA drives to the motherboard? I don't see how a laptop with SATA can use PATA drives.

 

With the cable provided for that specific job that was sold to me by Clevo's service people in the UK.

This is a specific cable for the task. I provided a photo in an earlier post.

It is sold as being specific for converting from SATA to PATA.

I really did think I had made that clear in previous posts - sorry if my prose was not specific enough.

Thank you collinsl for your interest in my problem.

Why do you think it won't work? I would hate to break the seal on the packaging of the new PATA HDDs if they won't work. I can return them if I don't break the seals.

 

In that image you supplied:
1. Do the connectors on the SATA drives stick out at all?
2. Are there any connectors on the back?
3. Is the cable flexible?

 

It's a flexible ribbon. As explained previously, the single plug connects onto the mother board into the socket that the SATA cable is presently installed. The two identical plugs fit onto the PATA drives.

Look at the printed circuit. Very few of the pins are in use which (I believe) is what you might expect with a SATA drive.

There are no connectors or printed conductors on the back.

Have you looked at the connectors on the end of a 2.5” SATA drive?

 

What you have there then is a PATA to 2 SATA drive converter, allowing you to attach 2 SATA drives to a PATA interface. Therefore if your hard drives are PATA (the single connector on the bottom) they will not connect to the SATA connectors, and the cable will not attach to the motherboard.

What I think you have is a PATA laptop and SATA drives. What is the make and model of the drives and the laptop please so we can clear this up once and for all.

 

OK - I think I know why we are all confused. In one or two earlier posts I have confused the acronyms “PATA” and “SATA”

My original question was about jumpers not compatibility but for the record I will state the case again.

Presently my 5 year old Clevo D900T laptop has two Parallel ATA drives working in a RAID. (Mirrored).

I wish to increase the capacity of the HDDs on my computer.

Large capacity 2.5” Parallel HDDs are not available above 320 GB and are expensive.

I have therefore purchased two new Serial HDDs and a conversion cable from Clevo’s Service department.

The two new Serial HDDs (not yet unpacked but which can be examines through the transparent packaging) are Western Digital Serial ATA drives with a set of pins that will obviously connect to the two connectors on the new cable obtained from Clevo which will obviously match the socket on the motherboard.

I have no reason to believe that this will not work

There is no problem with all of the NEW bits connecting to eachother and to the motherboard.

As I understand it the mother board supports both PATA and SATA drives.

I am sorry if I have caused confusion by using the wrong acronyms in earlier posts, but having re read them I think my purpose was clear.

I hope this clears thing up. - But what about the jumpers?

 

Right, now we have that cleared up.

I am not sure about the jumpers as SATA drives do not provide jumpers for master/slave. Therefore I assume that they should just be plug and play.

 

UPDATE:

Because it has been impossible to be absolutely sure that new large capacity disks will work in this old computer I have decide not to proceed with the installation.

I have removed redundant files and programmes from the existing hard discs thus creating more space, and will hope that the computer will last another year when I will replace it with a new laptop.

Thank you for your interest and your help.

Jim