I just bought a WD1002FAEX-007BA0 and installed it on a Windows 7 64-bit system, with an Intel DX48BT2 motherboard. This motherboard has a native SATA II (3 Gb/s) controller.
The HD I bought is a native SATA III (6 Gb/s) HD, that I can set to work as SATA II (3 Gb/s) using a jumper on pins 5 and 6. I set the jumpers as specified, but Intel Control Center informs me that this HD is working as SATA I (1,5 Gb/s).
At the same time, a have a WD1001FALS-00E8B0 that is native SATA II, and works perfectly, with Intel Control Center reporting as working as SATA II.
I hope this is not a bad batch with wrong firmware, like the WD1002FAEX-00Y9A0, which required a firmware upgrade in order to work at the right speeds.
Moreover, when I use HD Tune to measure the HDs performance, in the WD1001FALS-00E8B0 I get a burst rate of 144 Mb/s, while the new WD1002FAEX-007BA0 gets a burst rate of 102 Mb/s, which is lower that the maximum transfer rate measured. I hope this has to do with the SATA I recognition, and not a problem with the drive.
I just removed the jumper that was supposed to turn my drive from a SATA III (6 Gb/s) into a SATA II (3 Gb/s) and the system really managed to autonegotiate it to work as SATA II. Now both my drives work as SATA II and they give correct benchmarks on HD Tune.
However, I wonder if I really connect it on a SATA III (6 Gb/s) controller, if it will really work as SATA III, or will also be as SATA II as it is now. If the jumper was supposed to make it work as SATA II, but it worked as SATA II only with NO jumper, this means that it doesn´t work as SATA III? To work as a SATA III on a future setup (for example) should I change the firmware or some configuration using a WD software?
We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused. The jumpers setting used to downgrade the interface speed on the drive is only recommended when the drive will be used on older SATA2 motherboards. Like you’ve mentioned, your motherboard was able to auto-negotiate the interface connection, older boards were not able to and the jumper setting was required.
In your case, using the jumper setting lead to some conflicts where the drive was coming up as a SATA1 device instead. When you eliminated the jumper setting, the drive was detected and the computer automatically adjusted the speed so it can used the drive. If you use the drive on a motherboard with SATA3 interface connections, the drive will use its default connection speed.
If possible, you can test the drive using configuration, but you will need a motherboard that has SATA3 ports, which you may not have available.
