I'm rebuilding my father's computer. I've installed a new ASRock
motherboard. My question is about the new harddrive I'm using. The
connections on the back are different from the old 2003 harddrive he
was using before (they're both made by Western Digital). See picture:
http://i70.photobucket.com/albums/i98/totalrod2/HardDrives.png?t=1225417380
Can the pins marked "A B C D" be used for power? If so, how do I hook
it up? (in relation to the numbers on the plug).
Bryan
From left to right, your old drive has
<--- 40 pin IDE ---> <--- 2x4 jumper area ---> <--- 1x4 Molex power --->
From left to right, on your new drive
<--- 15 contact power ---> <--- 7 contact SATA data ---> <--- 2x4 jumper area --->
Pinout on SATA is described here.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sata
The 15 contact power connector, is 5 groups of three contacts.
3.3V, 5V, 12V are three of the five groups. The other two groups
are ground (or auxiliary functions).
You can buy adapter cables, going from 1x4 Molex on an old
power supply, to the new SATA wafer. Such an adapter will not
have 3.3V on it (1x4 Molex carries +5V and +12V only). But
the current generation of drives are still content to
use +5V and +12V anyway, so missing out on +3.3V is not
currently a problem.
The jumper area on either kind of drive is not standardized.
SATA drives can vary from no jumpers (Hitachi) up to your
example of a 2x4 area. Typically, there is room for two
useful jumpers, one controlling spread spectrum (to reduce
interference to TV/radio etc). Spread spectrum cannot be used
on some older Macintosh computers with SATA, but otherwise
you don't need to change the jumper. The second jumper forces
the communications rate on the cable, from 300MB/sec down to
150MB/sec, for better compatibility with first generation
equipment. For example, motherboards with VIA Southbridges
and 150MB/sec interfaces, are candidates for installing
that "force" jumper.
There is one drive per SATA cable, most of the time. You
can buy a device called a port multiplier, which converts
one SATA cable into five SATA connectors. They cost about
$100 and are uncommon (never run into anyone who has used
one).
When you see "Master" or "Slave" in the BIOS screen for
the SATA interfaces, that is a labeling convention, and
in fact the drives don't have the notion of master or
slave. The old IDE drives were "two per cable", with one
a master and the other a slave. For SATA implementations
that emulate IDE hardware, it is easier to label them
as master and slave, as part of the old labeling scheme.
Don't apply power to the jumper pins, because the
magic smoke will escape if you do
You need a SATA
power connector to do it right.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812186043
HTH,
Paul
