Why does a SATA hard drive have jumpers?

Why does a SATA hard drive have jumpers? Back in the days of PATA hard drives, a person used jumpers on the drive to indicate whether the drive was the master or the slave of the channel, or to let the cable select which drive was which.
Asked by: Guest \| Views: 452

Total answers/comments: 2

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Guest [Entry]

"Some SATA drivers have jumpers for extra features, or for troubleshooting.
Example from the manual of a Western Digital SATA disk:

Set the Jumpers
The default setting for WD SATA hard
drives varies depending on the model.
To determine the default setting for
your drive, look at the drive label on
the top of the drive.
DO NOT change
the default setting if you intend to
use the drive in a desktop computer.
Change the jumper settings ONLY if you
intend to use the drive in an
enterprise storage environment. For
more information on these advanced
settings, obtain the full version WD
SATA Installation Guide at
support.wdc.com.
SSC_DIS Mode
(Default) — Enable or disable the
spread spectrum clocking feature.
Default setting is disabled.
OPT1 — Only for factory use.
OPT2 — Only for
factory use."

Guest [Entry]

Some SATA drives have jumpers to enable/disable 3Gb/s functionality or other backwards compatibility items.