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Do SATA Hard Drives need Jumpers?

Question by Alaska1966 | 2016-04-27 at 16:24

I am getting a new PC next week and I want to keep my old hard drive for it. The new computer will have an own built in hard drive which I want to format in order to use it just as media disk.

Now I wonder whether I have to use jumpers for my hard drives to make them work. In former times, with the old IDE hard disks, you had to use a jumper to set the drives to master and slave.

Is this necessary even today with SATA HDDs or will new computers automatically find the drive with Windows installed?

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With SATA there is no distinction between master and slave anymore.

That was necessary with the old SCSI and IDE disks because with this system, it was possible to have two hard disks (or also other drives) at one port (those cables with an additional plug in the middle). With S-ATA (Serial-ATA), each disc is hanging at an own port of the controller so you do not need the master and slave thing anymore.

Nevertheless, some SATA hard drives can still have jumpers. Depending on the disc model and the manufacturer, you can adjust some settings with them, for example you can set a writing protection or you can control the start up process of the drive.

If you put your hard drive at the same cable at which also the old built in drive was and if you keep a possible jumper configuration, it should be enough in your case. Probably, you have to go to the BIOS and set the desired hard drive as boot medium (I am recommending that to see whether the configuration is okay).
2016-04-27 at 20:11

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