Connectors & Jumpers

This is a Serial ATA hard drive, with native support for SATA 3.0 Gb/s. However, it is backward-compatible so you will have no problem using it with older SATA 1.5 Gb/s controllers. However, the faster SATA 3.0 Gb/s interface is necessary for optimal performance since this WD Scorpio Blue hard drive has a small 8 MB buffer and boasts a maximum sustained internal (platter-to-buffer) transfer rate of 147 MB/s.

Like all Serial ATA drives, it comes the standard SATA data (left) and power (right) connectors and is hot-pluggable. That means you can connect and disconnect this hard disk drive to your PC while it's still running. To the left of the SATA connectors is the jumper block.

From what we can tell, Western Digital do not ship any of their drives with a jumper. This is because practically all end-users will not need to use a jumper.

According to the label, jumpering pins 1 and 2 enables Spread Spectrum Clocking (SSC). Similarly, placing it across pins 3 and 4 enables the drive's Reduced Power Spinup (RPS) mode. RPS reduces the spike in power consumption during drive spin-up, but is only necessary in situations where the power supply may not be able to support the spike in power consumption during boot up (e.g. if you are using multiple hard disk drives).

Generally, there is no need to mess around with the jumper block.

Breather Hole

The WD5000LPVT has a breather hole on the top plate, near the upper left corner. Do not cover this hole, as the nearby warning on the label clearly states.

Breather holes allow condensation inside the hard drive to escape. They also equalize the hard drive's internal pressure with the ambient air pressure. The hard disk drive needs them to function properly, so please make sure you do not occlude this hole, or any other hole you may see.

New Top Plate & Headstack Design

The Western Digital WD5000JPVT drive sports a stainless steel top plate, which we first saw in the new 1 TB Western Digital Scorpio Blue (WD10JPVT). As we revealed in our Q & A With Western Digital article, this stainless steel top plate is much stiffer than the usual aluminium top plate in previous Western Digital Scorpio hard disk drives. This reduces the amount of flexing and torquing, allowing the drive to achieve a new height in shock tolerance - up to 400 Gs of shock during reads. The drive's increased robustness is also due to a new headstack design that is more robust against shock and vibration.

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