SATA 300Mb/s Cable

[Caimbeul]

Hi,

I have an Asus A8N Premium Mobo and have just bought a WD Caviar 16Mb (250Gb) SATA drive. As my mobo supports SATA II/300, is it safe to assume that the SATA cable that came in the box for the mobo are SATA II/300Mb/s capable?

Also posted on another thread but with no reply yet (i know this forum isnt as busyt as the Graphics section but...) could someone shed some light on this question too? :?

Could anyone tell me if having an ATA HDD on the mobo will slow down the SATA one? (as in a primary ATA33 drive woud slow a secondary ATA100?)

Also are there any special master slave settings to make sure of (put 1x or both ATA's as slaves with jumoers?). I plan to have a SATAII drive as my main for OS and games and an IDE for back up files and misc crap.

I currently have 2x ATA drives - am I able to simply pop the new SATA in as a master/1st boot drive then delete/re-organise data on what is currently my system HDD? or wil i have to remove that, have 1xATA back up and the 1x SATA as main?

Excuse my ignorance as I too and one of the many "noobs" when it comes to anything beyond regular ATA setps.

Any help is appreciated!

 

[sturm]

The cable will be fine.

Sata are each on their own channel so you wont have problems from other drives.
Drives on ide channels are configured just as if there werent any sata drives. You still need to set the jumper to master, slave, or CS.


I would install the sata drive and remove the origional drives. Once windows is installed then you can reinstall the old drives and recover what data you want to keep. Make sure the bios is set to boot off sata first and not ide.

 

[Caimbeul]

Cool so they all live together happily!

Thanks for the reply. Much appreciated.

 

[wun911]

Is there really a SATA II cable and a SATA I cable? I thought the SATA cables are backwards compatible?? I just upgraded my HD from a SATA I to a SATA II however I used the same cable for my new SATA II HD.
(I use my old SATA I HD as an external HD now)

 

[Codesmith]

There really are not SATA I vs SATA II hard drives. Would made sense if there was, that way you can tell which features are supported by what drives, but there isn't.

SATA II was the name of the group that set the latest SATA standards, it was a stupid name that confused people so they changed it to SATA-IO

In fact the SATA-IO does not want anyone to call any drive a SATA II drive.

You consider all SATA drives to be SATA II drives since they all follow standards set forth by the former SATA II committie.

But that woud be stupid cause people will wonder where the SATA I drives went.

The SATA-IO group has defined a bunch of specifications which manufactures can implement in their SATA products.

There are no classifications or levels, you get to pick and chose what goes into your product.

So one drive might support SATA 3.0 Gbps transfer rates but not NCQ while another drive might support SATA 150 MBps transfer rates and NCQ.

Since no desktop drive breaks the 100MBps mark, the max transfer rate is irrelevant. Maybe its good to have a 3.0 Gbps controller (which is really a 300 MBps cause they cheated and counted parity bits) because someday there may be hard drives that exceed 150 MBps. But I wouldn't hold my breath.

Consequently and perhaps paradoxically there are SATA 150 drives that are more advanced than any SATA 3.0 Gbps drive.

Anyway you can read more here.

http://www.sata-io.org/namingguidelines.asp

Anyway since you drive isn't going to exceed 150 MBps it doesn't matter if its rated to handle speeds above 150 MBps.

 

[Codesmith]

If I mentioned that I mispoke.

There are no SATA I and SATA II cables.

But there are cables rated for up to 150 MBps and cables rated for up to 3.0 Gbps. I don't know if any of the latter are in the wild yet since no drive needs better than the 150 MBps cable.

There are also internal SATA cables and eSATA cables which are mechanically incompatible.

Confusingliy most external enclosure use internatl SATA cables becaue they started making external products as soon as they realized it worked.

Later the SATA-IO decided to introduce eSATA, make it mechanically incompatible with the internal cable and double the permissible cable length from one meter to two.

Some cards with external ports use SATA a few use eSATA.

Plus adapter exist to turn interal SATA ports to exteral eSATA ports while others turn SATA ports to SATA ports.

All the motherboards with external SATA ports seem to use the eSATA standard.

The external stuff is a pain, but it has to be since eSATA uses different voltages and requries each end to use more sensitive electronics to reach 6m.

 

[wun911]

So does that mean that I cant chop as in physically modify a SATA cable into an eSATA cable?

Or better still is there a cable out there that has a normal SATA end (for the MB inside the case) and on the other end an eSATA end (for external HD)?

ie eSATA----------------SATA ?????

 

[Codesmith]

No clue. I think THG has close up picture of both in an external storage reveiw.

All I know the voltage levels are higher for the eSATA to make 2 meters work so the ports at both end have to both output at higher voltages and accept weaker incomming signals. And they designed it so you can't accidentally use the wrong cable.

So it depends on how robust the port designs are. An adapter would put the devices out of spec on voltage and minimum signal strengh.

It would have been much simpler if they issued pushed eSATA at the same time as SATA. But they waited and the market created its own solutions.

The vast majority of manufactures/users are just using the interal cables internally and living with the 1 meter limmitation.

I got a 1 meter internal SATA cable going out the back of my system which I connect to my USB 2.0/SATA enclosure and it gets the job done.

I can buy a cheap pannel with an internal connector on both sides, but I don't mind the lose wire.

SATA-IO want people to stop using the internal connectors and cables externally, but they also want people to quit saying SATA II. Who knows when or if people will listen.