Thinkpads Forum

A recent thread on the Forum Seagate 500GB ST9500420AS Problem indicates some users have had problems setting up their Seagate SATA drives on systems that weren't originally projected for SATA 300 (like the T60p) until they discovered the need to set a jumper on the drive.

I'd like to hear back from as many readers as possible who are using 7200.3 series Seagate Momentus drives in a T60 or T60p, preferably the 320GB size. I'm upgrading my T60p main drive to a Seagate ST9320421AS 320GB Momentus 7200.3 and would like to know if I need to set a jumper on it to make it work. To my knowledge the T60p is only SATA 150 (or 1.5 GB) and not SATA 300. I just got two of these 7200.3 drives and neither had a jumper on it. Earlier 7200.2 drives I received from Seagate had a jumper.

thanks for the help,
DenTP4rm

Den, the Momentus drives (320 and 500 alike) do not ship with any jumpers. However, if you hold the drive with the electronics side down, facing the end with the contacts on it, you will see four pins isolated off on the right side of the strip.

That's where you apply a mini box jumper to force the drive into SATA-I mode instead of the native SATA-II mode. I believe the jumper goes across the middle two pins to do this, the other positions don't do anything documented. I'd suggest calling Seagate to confirm the correct position if you need to do this.

I just went through four 5400.6 (500GB) drives in order to get ONE that was not defective. I'd be reluctant to touch another Seagate Momentus drive for a while now. This suggests to me that they have a massive QC failure on the drives, plus a second worse QC failure (not testing the remans they send out for swaps) plus a third failure (i.e. taking a month to complete a 48-hour purchased advance swap) in customer service...all signs that management has lost its grasp.

And that's from someone who has been swearing by Seagate drives for 25-odd years now.

Sailor, thanks for the feedback. I called Seagate and the rep I spoke with confirmed the need for a jumper. He said a lot of systems not projected for SATA-II mode would work with the drive without a jumper. However, he did acknowledge that some systems would not and it might not be readily apparent, i.e. you could install, boot, run and then have instability issues at some future point. Not something I'd like to go through. He said there would be no problem in jumpering the drive from the start, assuming the system was only projected for SATA-I mode. That's what I plan to do.

The rep was unsure but I asked him to check and he confirmed the jumper goes on the 1&2 pins. This is looking at the drive with the electronics up and counting from the left edge of the drive going right. This is in keeping with info on the Seagate 7200.2 drives in this manual.

It's too bad to hear about the QC issues with Seagate. I have been using them very satisfactorily for several years myself but it sound like a lot of users have been having problems lately. Hope the two 320s I bought work all right. Any recommendations?

I'd still like to hear from any other readers with experience with the jumper issue on Seagate SATA-II drives in the T60p.

Thanks again for your help.
DenTP4rm

Damfino, I had a shor tlist of prime vendors for a long time. Seagate, WD, IBM & Hitachi (now all Hitachi)...so there's two of those left, WD and Hitachi. Both make 320GB drives, and I think Hitachi offers onboard drive full encryption as well, a point for them. WD is up to strange things, i.e. their Passport USB external drives are using the same laptop drives--but with different prices and warrantees, and specs often not published, messing with minds in order to play a sales game.

It seems to come down to checking prices "this quarter", then reviews or features, and especially warranty. I'd gotten somewhat slack about backing up but have gotten more religious about it. wtf, drives are cheap (possibly too cheap to maintain reliability) these days, so it makes sense to have AT LEAST one full image drive backed up.

If you can trust images...I've seen the Vista PC Backup & Restore refuse to accept older backups ("not from this computer") and the OEM versions of Acronis True Image (from Seagate and Apricorn both) create clones--but then render the old hard drive unable to boot OR be repaired to bootable.

As Her Royal Brittanic Majesty, Victoria, once said "We are not amused."