1.5Gbits or 3.0Gbits?

[Fei169]

I bought a Seagate ST3250410AS 250GB model...and it supports 3.0Gbits. There is a jumper installed in the back which if taken off sets it to 3.0Gbits from 1.5Gbits. My question is: why is there a limitation placed? Is there something wrong with having the drive run at 3.0Gbits operation? And which one should I use? Which would be more stable? Thanks.

Forgot to mention I have a ASUS M2N-SLI Deluxe mobo.

 

[GeorgeH]

Older motherboards may support only 1.5GB transfers and may not deal properly with a hard drive that supports both speeds.

 

[g-paw]

Even if the hdd will work while set to 3.0 the speed will be limited by the mobo. You could try it set at 3.0 and if it works, fine. If not, change the jumper settings.

 

[technology-sponge]

No problem with removing the jumper to enable 3.0gb/s.

They ship with the jumper by default, for compatibility with the first generation motherboards/controllers, who didn't support SATA2.

Whether you take it off or leave it on, make no real difference. Most hard disks do not reach above the 100MB/sec mark, unless you have SDDs in RAID or something. Only difference is that 1.5gb/s will limit your burst speed (from the onboard flash cache), but thats still not significant in real life.

No real harm in removing the jumper though.