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 Black hard drive has a large 16 MB buffer and boasts a maximum sustained internal (platter-to-buffer) transfer rate of 108 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 ships some drives with a jumper and others without a jumper. Since our OEM unit did not come with one, it is likely that only retail drives come with the 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 WD Scorpio Black 500 GB hard disk drive has a breather hole on the top plate, although there may be more holes on the underside that could be breather holes. To be safe, do not cover any of these holes.

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 the holes!

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