The present disclosure generally relates to utilizing the host clock signal frequency to determine whether to operate in the default pulse width modulation (PWM) link startup sequence (LSS), be changed to high speed (HS) LSS by a host device capable of operating in either PWM LSS or HS LSS, or ignore the data storage device attributes of operating in PWM LSS and instead operate according to HS LSS. In so doing, the data storage device is adaptable to work with older generation UFS host devices as well as current and future generation UFS host devices.