do oem hard drives come with the cable?

You'll have to buy one.

Usually the mobo comes with a couple of SATA cable but if you've all of them, you'll have to buy one

could you guys link me to some because i can only find 1.5 gb/s cables and cant seem to find a 3 gb/s cable.

I tried to get to newegg hdd accessories to check but for some reason couldn't get the page up. The last time I looked, a couple months ago, ran into the same thing. Not really sure it would make any difference, as far as I know a SATA II should work with a 1.5 cable.

yeah and howcome I dont see sataII on my hard drives.... do they even support it?

your hard drive will never saturate a SATA I connection, so I would worry too much about it. SATA II is backwards-compatible with SATA I, so whatever SATA connector you use will be fine.

Get the model # off the drive and search for it. Most SATA drives wont say SATA II, but rather SATA 3G or some crap like that. Either way, most drives will, like HotFoot said, never even come close to reaching SATA I saturation, let alone 3G(or SATA II, or whatever...).

THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS SATA II!

*breathe deeply*

The standard is SATA 3Gb/s (and the previous standard is SATA 1.5Gb/s).

Well, if it doesn't exist, then a lot of people are using the wrong term. Hardware vendors, for example, sell "SATA II" hard drives. In any case, it's semantics. Everyone knows they mean 3 GB/s. The point is that no one I know of sells a 3 GB/s HDD.

>a lot of people are using the wrong term

Yes, indeed.

The situation in this thread is exactly the reason that no one should refer to SATA as "SATA I" and "SATA II". The two names imply that there are two different standards -- there are not. SATA is ONE standard. ALL SATA devices are interoperable.

The only minor exception is that some early SATA controllers had difficulty with drives that implemented 3 Gb/sec transfer rates, and therefore hard drive manufacturers have implemented a selector (usually a jumper) to force the drive to use 1.5 Gb/sec operation. Use this jumper if you're connecting to an early revision SATA controller.

Extensions to the SATA standard can be many more things than just 3 Gb/sec transfer rates. An individual drive or controller can optionally implement any or all of the following in any combination:

- 3 Gb/sec transfer rates
- Hot swap capability
- NCQ
- eSATA compliance

Saying that a device is "SATA II" tells you nothing about the device's actual capabilities. You MUST list the capabilities individually.

So, to the OP, there is NO SUCH THING as a 1.5 Gb/sec cable or a 3 Gb/sec cable. It is a SATA cable. It works with all SATA devices.