WD Caviar Black 1 TB SATA III only runs at 1.5 gbps

captainobvious · 08 Jan 2013

Hello all,

Thank you in advance for any help on my very first post. I am quite the newbie so pardon my ignorance.

I just set up a RAID configuration on my HP p6230y desktop with a pair of WD Caviar Black 1 TB hard drives. From what I understand my new hd's use Sata III which can run up to 6.0 gbps, but my mobo is Sata II which means it can only run 3.0 gbps. Correct me if what I just stated is wrong.

However, when I enter the "Raid option rom utility" screen by hitting Ctrl + f while it's scanning my drives on bootup, i see that my hd's "capabilities" is only 1.5 gbps. Is there something i can do to improve this speed at least to the 3.0 gbps? I heard something about trying a jumper on the pin set on the hd itself, but can anyone please clarify?

Thanks again.

bobafetthotmail · 08 Jan 2013

captainobvious said:

but my mobo is Sata II which means it can only run 3.0 gbps. Correct me if what I just stated is wrong.

Correct. I personally fail to see the point of placing a SATA III on a hard disk as it is not going to use that bandwidth anyway. Only SSDs can actually use so much.
You aren't losing anything imho.

I heard something about trying a jumper on the pin set on the hd itself, but can anyone please clarify?

googling "wd1002faex jumper settings" (the first part is the model name of the hard drive you linked from newegg, if that isn't your drive, please check its model name from Device Manager, playing with pins using the wrong pin map is ummm... foolish), I found this page of WWD support about jumper settings of that model.

From that page, seems like there are two versions of that drive model, one SATA II and one SATA III only the SATA II drives can be dialed down to SATA I with a jumper, while placing the jumper in the same place for SATA III drives dials them down to SATA II.

In case you don't have any jumper set, set it at SATA II if you want it to connect to a SATA II port on the mobo.

Please note that speed in a RAID depends from the kind of RAID mode you are selecting, and if the drives in the array are the same model or not.
This provides more info

captainobvious · 09 Jan 2013

Thanks for the help, bobafetthotmail.

My hd is indeed the wd1002faex model with the 6.0 gbps capabilities.

I am using the RAID 1 "mirroring" style. Does this mean that I need to set a jumper on both hd's in order for this to work?

bobafetthotmail · 09 Jan 2013

both hdds should be the same capacity and run at the same SATA version (in your case the SATA II), if they are the same model, yes both have to be set correctly with the jumper.

If the other disk isn't the same, see if it is SATA II or if not see if it has a jumper setting.

Phone Man · 09 Jan 2013

WD drives use Auto-Sensing to match the speed of the Motherboard. Some older MB do not support Auto-Sensing and that is where the jumpers are used. I looked at you MB link and it states it has Sata II and Sata I ports. You need to see if you have your drives in the correct ports.

Jim

captainobvious · 10 Jan 2013

bobafetthotmail,

Thanks for the input. I tried the jumpers on both hd's at the 5-6 setting, but still saw "1.5G capabilities" on the Option ROM Utility screen.

Phone Man,

Thanks for the input. The maddening thing is that I can't find anywhere in the mobo specs which ports are Sata I and which are Sata II. I tried changing the plugs to different ports once but that didn't do the trick. I think there's 6 ports in all.

alphanumeric · 10 Jan 2013

If it's a spinner/mechanical drive 1.5 Gb/s sounds about right. That's 150 MB/s and about as good as it gets for a mechanical drive with a platter. I get about 150 MB/s burst and 130 MB/s sustained with my 500 gig WD WD5000AAKS-22V1A0 SATA 2 drive. Just because it has a SATA 2 or even SATA 3 interface doesn't mean its going to run at full SATA 2 or 3 speeds.

bobafetthotmail · 11 Jan 2013

try to look in BIOS options if there is some setting about the HDD itself (should have a page about devices) or there is some option about the RAID (maybe in chipset options) that can change that. I'm sorry but every BIOS is different, so I cannot be more specific.

captainobvious · 22 Jan 2013

Thank you all for your help.

Unfortunately, I was unable to achieve the 3.0 gbps. Just can't figure it out. Maybe I'll take it somewhere when I get around to it.

Thanks again!

alphanumeric · 23 Jan 2013

If you look at the spec sheet for that drive the Data transfer rate (max) Buffer to host is 6 Gb/s but the "Host to from drive (sustained)" is only 126 MB/s.
http://www.wdc.com/wdproducts/librar...879-701276.pdf
126 MB/s = 1.01 Gbps, assuming I got the math right this early in the morning.