Windows 7 PINS ON MY TWO HDDs

[Rus]

On my 80gb hdd (Toshiba) I have four pins just to the left of the usual seven and fifteen pin array.

My original 500gb Toshiba hdd has the same pin array.

What are the four pins for?

 

[patcooke]

Depending on whether they are sata or ide on an ide drive the two pairs at the end are for jumpers to select master/slave configurations.

 

[Rus]

Depending on whether they are sata or ide on an ide drive the two pairs at the end are for jumpers to select master/slave configurations.

OK. Thanks. Then they are irrelevant since I have a laptop. Appreciate the quick response.

 

[Digerati]

We don't have enough information. We need to know if it is an EIDE (PATA) or SATA drive. 4 pins on an EIDE drive could very well be for the power connection. 7 and 15 suggests SATA, however, and they don't use Master/Slave settings. Therefore, I suspect the 4 pins you are referring to are for Legacy support - to force the drives to use older SATA protocols on some older motherboards. Some SATA drives have two more pins in that location for standby power and some include yet another pair for spread spectrum clocking - two features most users don't ever need.