SATA Cables

[DanSan]

is there such a thing as a SATA I and SATA II cable that differ? I've seen on tons of websites for sata cables that some will say sata 1.5 and some 3.0.

lets say i were to get either of these:

http://www.xoxide.com/serial-ata-ii-uvblue-18.html

http://www.xoxide.com/uvserialata.html

would the bandwidth be limited if i didnt get the one that explicitly said SATA II? or will any sata cable do the max bandwidth possible?

[Zephik]

That is a good question. lol I don't even know the answer to this one. I would have to guess though, from reading the two pages, that the cables are different. For a dollar more though, eh? why risk it? It says it is "backwards compatible" with Sata, so... I guess there is a difference?

[simon275]

The numbers 1.5, 3.0 are the rates in "giga bits per second" Gbit/s. So 3.0 is faster.

Yes the cables are backwards compilable.

Some of the more technically minded may be going dam thats fast. No hard drive can actually provide data that fast so that is how fast the bus can put data through even if the drives can't supply data that fast.

Hope this helps.

[GT40_GearHead]

I doubt there is any performance differance betwin them....
the conectors may differ a bit, on the lines of: a bit more rubber to hold on or something like this

on a side note... i have a SATA II Seagate Barracuda 7200RPM 120 GB working with SATA I cables on an ASUS P4C800-E-DELUXE
it works perfect no problems what so ever

dont worry about it, it will work

[DaJe]

If a drive can't supply the data that fast, then why are the drives advertised as 3Gb/s?

[dgrmkrp]

s there such a thing as a SATA I and SATA II cable that differ?
this is a funny question.. basically, there are just wires in the sata cable, be it sata 1 or sata 2.. as i haven't used the after market kind up till now, i can say that the thickness and feel of the different kind of cables is..well.. the same :| now, if someone has a mobo with both type of connections and both types of cables.. and drives to test with :) experiments? :D


If a drive can't supply the data that fast, then why are the drives advertised as 3Gb/s?
well, you also have to talk to the drive.. :) as weird as that sounds.. the big bandwidth is for i/o and transfers.. if the transfer is limited by current platter technology, there is still much to do in the realm of efficiency and smallish operations.. also, in order o achieve maximum bandwidth, 2 or more sata2 10k rpm drives in RAID 0 can be used and you'll get.. well.. bigger numbers.. there are reviews on tomshardware that play with this and tell us just how much we can get.. also, the 3Gb/s shouldn't be taken as such.. it's actually 3/8.. to get GB/s :) so, it is an improvement.. but more important are the ncq and similar innovations.. (of course, this is for normal hard drives.. who knows what ssd will need? :|)

[Nagoshi]

Let's say, why the computer was designed to handle speeds of 13Gb/secs in the video card, about the same thing in the RAM, the CPU being uber fast too, and HDDs designed for 3Gb/secs, and CD drive for about 100Mb/sec, when you copy about 700Mb of files in like 2-3 minutes?

PRetty easy, actually. From my side of view, they calculate their bitrate (13gb/sec, etc) by sending bytes of datas in some kind of special betacomputer (in my head, it does not have any OSs, it's just like a big calculator with a lot of "pipelines" that will direct bytes (data) to the components to test them), and so it will calculate how much bytes it can move in a second. These things are calculated in the BEST conditions possible, that is not achievable with our machines.

[GT40_GearHead]

the 13 gb/sec speeds you are talking aboutare thre because there is a huge volume of data going from RAM to CPU to GPU the HDD doesn't do that much

and yes your SATA II HDD will get to 3GB/s but only in burts, by bursts i mean the amount of data that is on the cache memory of the HDD

[Airbozo]

....

and yes your SATA II HDD will get to 3GB/s but only in burts, by bursts i mean the amount of data that is on the cache memory of the HDD

This is the correct response!

The cache will be able to send data faster across the bus than direct platter reads. Drive manufacturers have been playing with cache technologies for decades trying to improve the access speed of disks by designing algorithms that "predict" what data will be needed based on past data access. Some drives mention "read ahead cache" and this is what they are talking about. If the algorithm succeeds in "predicting" the data you need then the access time is extremely short and the data that is already in the cache is sent out. If not, then you only lose a very short slice of time while the cache is flushed (simultaneously with the next data read in most cases). Manufacturers are increasing the cache size every year and improving the algorithms to better anticipate user/system needs.

When benchmarking drives, most people turn off the read ahead cache and also make sure that all reads are on new data, not what was just read as it may be a read from cache (depending on the drive). Seagate put out a product many years ago that was basically just a pack of memory that you plugged your HD into that was an external cache with custom algorithms. It never really worked that well for normal users and the price tag was about 10x the cost of the drive.

[DanSan]

Ok, so it doesnt matter AT ALL what SATA cable I get.. It could say SATA, SATA II, SATA IV, SATA X and it probably wont matter.

thanks for the help