The Notebook Review forums were hosted by TechTarget, who shut down them down on January 31, 2022. This static read-only archive was pulled by NBR forum users between January 20 and January 31, 2022, in an effort to make sure that the valuable technical information that had been posted on the forums is preserved. For current discussions, many NBR forum users moved over to NotebookTalk.net after the shutdown.
Problems? See this thread at archive.org.

    Identifying Jumpers

    Discussion in 'Hardware Components and Aftermarket Upgrades' started by muffiee, May 29, 2010.

  1. muffiee

    muffiee Newbie

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    1
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    5
    Hi guys,

    Long story short my dell c400 wont boot up and looks like it's a hard drive problem, was intending on getting a replacement hard drive however i dont know much about jumpers,

    THe laptop only accepts 1 hard drive in it so i guess this must mean it must be set to master.

    Can you help me identifiy what physically the jumper is?
    Ive read on other sites long details about what jumpers are but as for identifying them all i ever see are diagrams with black marks where it says the jumper is but i dont know what this means.

    Is the jumper a black plastic tab on a connector?

    For simplicity ive taken photo of my hard drive that isnt working properly, can you help me identify where the jumper is? i know its on the connector somewhere

    [​IMG]
    [​IMG]
     
  2. Fintan

    Fintan Notebook Consultant

    Reputations:
    48
    Messages:
    140
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    30
    It would obviously be the lower ones, since those are not connected to the system.

    However, I have had quite a few laptops and exchanged hdd's for all of them and never had to use any jumpers.
    A new hdd will probably work right out of the box without jumpers.
     
  3. PapaSmurf69

    PapaSmurf69 Notebook Consultant

    Reputations:
    25
    Messages:
    216
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    30
    Just a side note. That model is too old to have bios level 48bit addressing support so it will NOT support hard drives larger than 137gb in size which effectively limits you to a 120gb drive as the largest it can safely and reliably use. There are some tricks used to fool the bios into thinking it supports a larger drive but they are NOT reliable long term and should be avoided. Trying to use a larger hard drive, even when using these gimmicks will result in the total loss of data eventually (often times in as little as a couple of days). If you value your data I recommend getting a 120gb drive or smaller.
     
  4. newsposter

    newsposter Notebook Virtuoso

    Reputations:
    801
    Messages:
    3,881
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    105
    I suspect that the maker of the hard drive will have a data sheet on line which might have such tech information.

    Although we can divine "toshiba" from the blurry portion of the photo, the model/capacity info on the drive remains a mystery to all of us.