Help needed for SATA Hard Drive Installation

[WSW]

I am building a new PC and this time decided to use a SATA hard drive as boot disk.

My new PC configuration is as follows:
- ASUS P4P800 motherboard
- Intel Pentium 4 2.4GHz
- WD Caviar WD1200JD 120GB SATA hard disk
- ATI Radeon 9500 Pro video card
- Windows XP Home Edition

I bought the Western Digital SATA drive today. Because it is an OEM version, it does not have installation instructions or install disk. Since I have not install SATA drive before, I need some advise from disk experts.

Can someone tell me the steps to install a SATA drive?

On the WD1200JD drive, there is a connector for Legacy Power and a connector for SATA Power. Can I use only Legacy Power to power the drive?

There is a 8-pin connector on the drive. The four possible settings are "SSC_DIS". PM2, OPT1 and OPT2. I don't know the meaning of the jumper settings. Can someone explain? The default factory setting is on SSC_DIS. Should I leave it as is?

When I install Windows XP Home Edition, will the OS detect the new SATA drive and do the partition and format automatically?

[Kov-Ice]

I have mine connected using the regular 4-pin power plug. I don't know that SATA power plugs are very common at this point.

I thought SATA drives were jumperless, as they are on their own channel, but someone else will have to clarify. I don't think I have anything jumpered on mine.

BIOS will recognize and XP will format no problem.

[WSW]

I connected the SATA drive with the 4-pin legacy power connector from the power supply. Then I connect the SATA signal cable from the drive to the ASUS motherboard. I let the rest of the jumpers in factory default configuration.

I went into the ASUS motherboard bios and make sure that the SATA option is enabled. I put the Windows XP disk into the DVD/CD drive.

When I power up the computer, the motherboard detected the SATA drive automatically. It then booted from the XP disk in the DVD/CD drive.

XP setup detected the new SATA drive automatically and ask for confirmation to partition and format.

After the SATA disk was formatted, Windows XP was loaded without any problem. The new computer seems to work fine.

I am still wondering about the 8-pin jumper connector on the SATA drive. The four possible settings are "SSC_DIS". PM2, OPT1 and OPT2. I don't know the meaning of these jumper settings. Can someone explain? The default factory setting is on SSC_DIS. Should I leave it as is?

[Kov-Ice]

Leave as is. It's apparently a power mgmt feature. You can read more of the details HERE.

[Meethoss]

If you're unsure of it then check out the documentation online. Most manufacturers, nowadays, have online documentation for their products. Quite handy, unless you need that documentation to fix your computer to get online to read the documentation.... :P

[mike breck]

I find it ironic that one of the selling points of SATA was that it was suppose to eliminate confusing jumper settings. Now we see that WD have re-introduced confusion with four potential jumper settings.

Thanks for raising the issue WSW, as I'm sure many others will be asking about these jumper settings.

[WSW]

On-line documentation is very poor for the SATA drives. The only info on the WD1200JD is the brief product spec. There is no info for jumper settings or installation guide. I could not find SATA drive installation guide on the Western Digital site.

However, it turns out installation is very easy. I don't have to do anything with the jumpers. The drive is working fine. I like the drive. It is fast and quiet.