Do we know of a wiki/list with SATA II/III drives known to be capable of SATA I downstepping via jumper pins?

[B S Magnet]

The topic title more or less sums up the question.

While I know there are early Intel Macs with SATA I buses only, I’m posting here because there are more folks who are liable to see it.

In short, some SATA II/III SSDs (and HDDs) have a set of pins next to the SATA connectors which, via use of jumpers, can be stepped down to SATA I speeds for legacy hardware. The jumper pins, of course, appeared during the era of PATA drives which needed jumper settings for [m]ain or [ s]econdary drives on a parallel bus.

A good example of SATA I-only setups are the SATA I bus for the two hard drive bays in a Power Mac G5, as well as Core Solo/Core Duo/Core 2 Duo Macs with a SATA I bus. For models like the G5s, SATA II/III drives can cause booting issues, but this can be alleviated when a SSD/HDD with jumper pins can be set with jumpers to step down to SATA I, per manufacturer instructions (usually, just a diagram on the hard drive label itself).

The thing is, some manufacturers include these pins, and some do not. Sometimes the pins only appear for a specific line of drives from a particular manufacturer. Overall, these pins are becoming less common with time.

Which brings me to the question: is there a resource anyone here knows of which lists currently available drives (SSD or HDDs) which include these jumper pins for the purpose of stepping down?

 

[eyoungren]

I know that most, if not all, Western Digital HDs have jumpers in the back. Not sure about WD SSDs though.

I can also confidently say that Apple branded Hitachi drives that were used for retail sales of MacPros in 2009/2010 are NOT jumperable. I have one of these drives at home.

 

[B S Magnet]

I know that most, if not all, Western Digital HDs have jumpers in the back. Not sure about WD SSDs though.

I can also confidently say that Apple branded Hitachi drives that were used for retail sales of MacPros in 2009/2010 are NOT jumperable. I have one of these drives at home.

Yah, I have a couple of those Hitachi drives which came out of a LaCie NAS enclosure after the main board in it failed. That was probably the first time I’d seen an absence of jumper pins on a 3.5" HDD. (Sidebar: they were also the shiniest disks I’ve ever seen.)

The only WD SSDs I‘ve bought to date is a single 500GB m.2, not the 2.5" form factor. As memory serves, I can’t remember ever seeing jumper pins on a 2.5" SATA drive, but I might be wrong there.

 

[eyoungren]

Yah, I have a couple of those Hitachi drives which came out of a LaCie NAS enclosure after the main board in it failed. That was probably the first time I’d seen an absence of jumper pins on a 3.5" HDD. (Sidebar: they were also the shiniest disks I’ve ever seen.)

The only WD SSDs I‘ve bought to date is a single 500GB m.2, not the 2.5" form factor. As memory serves, I can’t remember ever seeing jumper pins on a 2.5" SATA drive, but I might be wrong there.

I can't be certain about 2.5" drives (WD). I was mainly referring to 3.5 inch drives.

When I find a brand, no matter what it may be, I generally stick with it. For the last 15+ years that's been WD when I have a choice.

I've mostly got reds and greens with a few blues and blacks and a couple of RE (server) hard drives. So far, none of them have failed on me, including the older ones.

In the 90s to early 00s I was all about Maxtor though, until they became garbage.

 

[B S Magnet]

I can't be certain about 2.5" drives (WD). I was mainly referring to 3.5 inch drives.

When I find a brand, no matter what it may be, I generally stick with it. For the last 15+ years that's been WD when I have a choice.

I've mostly got reds and greens with a few blues and blacks and a couple of RE (server) hard drives. So far, none of them have failed on me, including the older ones.

In the 90s to early 00s I was all about Maxtor though, until they became garbage.

When it comes to 3.5" spinners, everything I use and have used since around 2001 has been from WD. I’ve still two working WD Black 1TB drives I bought in 2010 and even two WD Green 1TB drives from late 2009 which are still chugging along. Most of the vital stuff, however, are on a pair of WD Blue 4TB HDDs I bought in 2019, and which run inside a WD MyBook Duo enclosure.

For SSDs, I’ve been a lot more flexible because of budget constraints. This means I own no Samsung SSDs, but I do have a fun mix of iRecdata and Dogfish m.2s and mSATAs.

Topically, though, 3.5" SSDs are an anomaly, and that would need to be factored in if trying to find an SSD in that form factor, to say nothing of jumper pins being present.

 

[originaldotexe]

i've used those cheap adata ultimate ssd's in my powermac g5 quad and they just worked out of box, didn't have to mess with any settings or jumpers or anything. they may not be the best option though as they are lacking a dram cache which could make them a lot slower than other drives.

 

[B S Magnet]

i've used those cheap adata ultimate ssd's in my powermac g5 quad and they just worked out of box, didn't have to mess with any settings or jumpers or anything. they may not be the best option though as they are lacking a dram cache which could make them a lot slower than other drives.

What I’m trying to find out is which particular current models of SATA drives (2.5" or 3.5" form factor) do or don’t have jumper pins for down-stepping to SATA I. This applies equally to SSDs as well as HDDs.

 

[originaldotexe]

What I’m trying to find out is which particular current models of SATA drives (2.5" or 3.5" form factor) do or don’t have jumper pins for down-stepping to SATA I. This applies equally to SSDs as well as HDDs.

ah alright. i guess those adata's must do it automatically or something then because those are sata3 drives but they work in my powermacs.

 

[for this]

Current Seagate's 3.5" Barracuda drives have 4-pin jumper but there is no instruction about it.

Looks like WD is the only manufacturer that has a clear instruction about how to force a SATA 3 (6Gb/s) drive to work at SATA 1 (1.5Gb/s) speed.

http://wfcache.advantech.com/www/certified-peripherals/documents/96hd320g-st-wd7k_datasheet.pdf

The document is quite old. I'm not sure if it still applies today or not. At least many current WD's 3.5" drives still have that 8-pin jumper like in the document (the WD4005FZBX's jumper seems to have only 2 pins, though).

 

[B S Magnet]

ah alright. i guess those adata's must do it automatically or something then because those are sata3 drives but they work in my powermacs.

Some SATA II/III drive controllers, particularly on 2.5-inch SSDs, might be able to auto-detect and switch to a lower SATA protocol if it detects the bus as a slower protocol. I’ve had one SATA III SSD which would not boot from the drive bay in my PowerMac7,3 (DP G5 2.0) and one which would.

I also faced a situation nearly ten years ago when I bought my A1278 early 2011 MacBook Pro and promptly swapped the SuperDrive with a caddy for a second hard drive. Because I wasn’t planning to mess with that drive, I tried putting in a SATA III SSD from Kingston in the caddy and the HDD for data storage in the usual place. Because the SATA bus for the optical drive on that MacBook Pro was rated at SATA II, it couldn’t boot from the SSD on that bus. I had to swap these, which at the time was kind of a pain. (The standard hard drive location on that MBP is SATA III.) I since found a newer SSD for that laptop where, despite being SATA III, it boots fine from either location/bus.

Perhaps SSDs/HDDs with controllers to auto-detect could count as a distinct group from drives with manual jumpers, such as with WD 3.5-inch drives.

My own interest is in trying to find a list or compendium here (or anywhere) which lists drives known to boot on strictly SATA I buses on Macs. Call it “futureproofing” or whatever, but if I plan to keep around a Power Mac G5, I’m planning ahead, especially as additional SSDs might be concerned.

 

[Amethyst1]

Topically, though, 3.5" SSDs are an anomaly,

This bad boy is from 2008

(not my image)

 

[B S Magnet]

View attachment 1803135



(not my image)

I know they exist, but they aren’t exactly commonplace.