SATA 6G drive in 3G system

Are the Caviar Green 6G drives backward-compatible to 3G mainboards?

I expect they would be, but there’s no mention of that on the Caviar Green data sheet, I know 3G Greens are available, but I also want to minimize the power drain, and from the data sheet it seems  that amongst  the 500GB drives the 6G WD10EARX or -DX  draws less than the 3G WD5000AADS. As a matter of fact, if the 6Gs are backward  compatible, I’ll go for the 750GB WD7500AZRX, which has the same low drain & noise characteristics as the 500GB drive. Thanks for any advice.

Hi yes sata 6 G/bs will run on sata 3 G/bs. You may need to jumper the drive.

Hammey wrote:

Hi yes sata 6 G/bs will run on sata 3 G/bs. You may need to jumper the drive.

Thanks! Speaking of jumpers, I’ll be ordering a bare drive and don’t expect jumper-use info to come along with it. Where on the WD site can I find that info?

I’d hoped to be able to scare up a SATA III expansion card, but I can’t find any made for PICe x16 or PCI slots :flushed:. The sole PCIe x1 slot in my mainboard carries the USB3 card for my WD passport drive.

Hi from what I just checked I know they stopped the jumper to sata 2 mode on the laptop drives. And from what it seems they have cut out that jumper on most new drives the green included. Im running sata 6G/bs raptors on a sata 2 controller with no jumpers. Most sata 2 controllers will auto recognize the drive without a problem. This page gives you the specs and jumper’s and what they do.   http://support.wdc.com/product/install.asp?wdc_lang=en&fid=wdsfCaviar_Green