Does WD Gold have a 1.5gbps Mode?

WD Internal Drives Desktop & Mobile Drives
1

I bought a nice shiny new 1 TB WD Gold drive for a new server I’m building. Ultimately I’m going to have three of these drives in the server, but I’d like to get one working properly first.

Here’s the bottom line, my server doesn’t auto-negotiate SATA links, and only supports 1.5 Gbps speed. My last server was the same. I put some WD RE drives in it, and had to jumper them from 3 Gb to 1.5 Gb, after which they worked perfectly.

Well WD Gold drives are 6 Gb SATA. And it looks like the pin that used to lower the drives down to 1.5 Gb, now only lowers them down to 3 Gb. Which will not work in my server.

Is there any other way to force these drives into 1.5Gb mode? Some other pin combinations that are not documented? Some firmware settings you can easily change? Anything?

Worst case, I’ll have to return this drive, and buy some older RE4 drives. But i’d much rather use these Golds if I can.

FYI there are no options to upgrade the server’s firmware or to run off a PCI card. It’s a rackmount server and it is what it is.

2

Hi I008com

You should try contacting WD’s Technical Support about this for live assistance and troubleshooting

To Contact WD for Technical Support

http://support.wdc.com/support/case.aspx?lang=en

The link below will allow you to call support

Create a Support Case
Create a support case with our world-class service and support team.

3

I already submitted a support ticket and the only response there was another employee telling me to call. Why is it so hard for you guys to give the answers over the internet? Why must you insist I waste time on hold on my phone to get the details I need?

4

If anyone else with this question reads this, don’t waste your time calling. I don’t know why nobody could just tell me “no” over email or over this support forum.

But instead, I have to call india, sit on the phone with them while they try to google up an answer to a question. The guy I talked to obviously knew basically nothing about these drives. He was not a “technician”, he was a “tech support flow chart specialist”.

He told me they don’t recommend using these WD Gold drives on computers that need 1.5Gb, because 1.5Gb isn’t fast enough for the drives.
So first off, these are not SSD drives. 1.5Gb sata is still about 180 MB/sec, MORE than ample for a hard disk drive!
Second, the server is 1.5Gb. I’m not going to get a faster speed on my server if I use a different drive! I’m not asking which server I need to get the max speed from this WD drive I just bought. I’m asking how I can get this drive to work with my server at the fastest possible speed! The advice didn’t make sense.

So at the end of the conversation, all this guy does it email me a link to the basic WD SATA Jumper Settings chart. Completely ■■■■■■■ useless. This chart is the first thing that came up while looking in to this issue weeks ago.

This tech support is 100% clueless. Typical outsourced techsupport.

5

My sata controller is sata 1. Supposedly, because some drives that are supposed to be sata1 compatible wont talk to it. Annoying. I need to replace my drive.

So,… as a noob to this stuff, found out some things. Theres a thing called wdspeed which I could only find on hddguru, and this has a command which sets at least some wd drives to 6,3, or 1.5G operation. Might be enough for your case.

Or might not, if you have an awkward controller like mine. You may have to set options on the drive or on the os, so as the drive and the controller agree about some other things, like trim, spread spectrum, queuing, and some other things I didn’t understand and so don’t remember. A matter of enabliing on the drive, in another machine, only all that your controller can deal with, before even introducing them. At least it would only have to be done once, and there seems to be good documentation with that wdspeed thing.

As regards jumpers, as you say, it used to be a jumper on for sata1, off for 2, but lately I’ve seen ones where the same jumper will just get you from 3 to 2, and no option for 1. Thing is, lots of sata1 controllers are ok with this, and can talk to a sata2 drive, which has been set from 3 with a jumper. Mine wont. Would be nice to manually jumper from 3 to 1, but I’m starting to think its not possible. Maybe toshiba or seagate work this way, I haven’t seen them yet.

I came across a jumper to enable\disable spectrum, along the line somewhere, so there may be drives out there that can jump to 1.5, or the correct queuing setting, or whatever else, and be usable by me, but I can’t find out.

A failure of standards. No fair.

A lead for you, hopefully. Wdspeed. Used to be supplied by wd, and its gotta be safer codewise (no offense hddguru, much thanks in fact) to get it from them if you can. And my sympathy. Annoying to be advised with a sneer to get a new computer, isn’t it.

I’d like to get a new drive, but my machine is sata, and there are only sata drives available, so its not possible…