Single sata cable with multiple connectors

[qwerty1429]

I see that a cable manufacturer is making a single sata cable with multiple sata connectors. How many satas can be hooked up to one cable and what are the ramifications?

 

[geofelt]

Post a link to that cable. As far as I know, sata is only point to point.

 

[John_VanKirk]

Hi there,

Wonder if you may be referring to a split power cable for SATA drives where you might have 2 or 3 SATA 15 pin power connections from a Molex 4 pin standard power plug, or a PSU cable with a couple SATA power connectors.

SATA 7 pin data cables are one to one, each SATA device like a DVD or HDD are connected to a SATA port on the MB. They are not like a 40 pin IDE connector where you can connect 2 devices to a single IDE port and pin select the master or slave.

Could you please post the image (or URL to the image) of the cable you are referring and someone in the group will explain its exact use.

 

[qwerty1429]

I see that a cable manufacturer is making a single sata cable with multiple sata connectors. How many satas can be hooked up to one cable and what are the ramifications?

The link for the cable is http://www.svc.com/mod-4p3sata-bk.html . As a matter of fact besides the dual output they also have triples and quadruples?????

 

[John_VanKirk]

The link for the cable is http://www.svc.com/mod-4p3sata-bk.html . As a matter of fact besides the dual output they also have triples and quadruples?????

Hi there,

The cables you are referring to are Power cables, where you have one end with a Molex 4 pin (12v, 0, 0 5V) plug and several parallel 15 Pin SATA Power connectors. There are no 3.3 Volt pins on these in that SATA HDD, DVD drives don't use 3.3 V. This is only to deliver power to the drives.

"ModRight 12" Black Single Braid 4-Pin Molex to Triple SATA Adapter Cable"

You can kind of tell that from its description.

This is different from the SATA Data cables, which are 7 pin.

Just like with the older IDE drives, you needed a power connector (Molex or Berg) and a 40 pin 40/80 wire IDE data cable. With SATA you need a power connector (above) and a data cable which run 1:1 port to SATA drive.

all the different ports, plugs, cables, pins, for IDE, SATA, USB, IEEE 1394, Mini, Micro. can get very confusing!

 

[jsc]

Shucks. I thought I was going to find something new.

Maybe tomorrow.

 

[Guest]

Hi there,

The cables you are referring to are Power cables, where you have one end with a Molex 4 pin (12v, 0, 0 5V) plug and several parallel 15 Pin SATA Power connectors. There are no 3.3 Volt pins on these in that SATA HDD, DVD drives don't use 3.3 V. This is only to deliver power to the drives.

"ModRight 12" Black Single Braid 4-Pin Molex to Triple SATA Adapter Cable"

You can kind of tell that from its description.

This is different from the SATA Data cables, which are 7 pin.

Just like with the older IDE drives, you needed a power connector (Molex or Berg) and a 40 pin 40/80 wire IDE data cable. With SATA you need a power connector (above) and a data cable which run 1:1 port to SATA drive.

all the different ports, plugs, cables, pins, for IDE, SATA, USB, IEEE 1394, Mini, Micro. can get very confusing!

Hi there,

I am interested in kind of such a cable. My needs are, that I want to be able to connect several harddrives so that they all figures as only one big drive, leaving me a single drive on about 8 tb., is this possible? I need it to store videosequenses in one folder only, organised alphabetically.

Kindly

 

[geofelt]

Hi there,

I am interested in kind of such a cable. My needs are, that I want to be able to connect several harddrives so that they all figures as only one big drive, leaving me a single drive on about 8 tb., is this possible? I need it to store videosequenses in one folder only, organised alphabetically.

Kindly

I don't think you can do this from hardware on the pc, but you should be able to get those results in windows device management.

 

[Paperdoc]

Hi there,

I am interested in kind of such a cable. My needs are, that I want to be able to connect several harddrives so that they all figures as only one big drive, leaving me a single drive on about 8 tb., is this possible? I need it to store videosequenses in one folder only, organised alphabetically.

Kindly

I know of only two ways to get one single "drive" of about 8 TB capacity. One is commonly called "JBOD", an acronym for "Just a Bunch of Disks". It is often included with RAID systems, even though it is not a RAID array system. It is a software method to treat several hard drives as if they were strung together end-to-end into one huge drive. However, it is not a very reliable system, and I'd be wary of disastrous data loss if you link four 2TB units together.

The other is a proper RAID system. Five HDD's in a RAID5 array will give you four times the capacity of one of the drives, so five 2TB units yield 8 TB useful space. RAID 5 is pretty secure, but it can fail. I worked at a business with a professional IT group managing their RAID5 server system and it crashed TWO of its disks almost at the same time, so it had to be restored from backup tapes. RAID6 can actually survive the simultaneous failure of two of its members, but it uses six HDD's to give you four HDD's worth of space.

Any RAID system that large requires careful planning and proper monitoring and management. MOST importantly, you MUST have a backup system, too. Any HDD system, even RAID6, can fail. If you have that huge amount of data stored there and value it, you REALLY need to know how to get it ALL back when the storage system fails. The backup system itself needs careful planning and integration into the server system, and competent monitoring and operation, too.

These systems are not simple, and not easily created and managed by amateurs. If you think you can create a 8TB storage system with a simple cable and a bunch of HDD's jammed in a box, you are not ready to tackle this task.

 

[revdarkwolf]

The cables you are referring to are Power cables, where you have one end with a Molex 4 pin (12v, 0, 0 5V) plug and several parallel 15 Pin SATA Power connectors. There are no 3.3 Volt pins on these in that SATA HDD, DVD drives don't use 3.3 V. This is only to deliver power to the drives.
"ModRight 12" Black Single Braid 4-Pin Molex to Triple SATA Adapter Cable"
You can kind of tell that from its description.
This is different from the SATA Data cables, which are 7 pin.
Just like with the older IDE drives, you needed a power connector (Molex or Berg) and a 40 pin 40/80 wire IDE data cable. With SATA you need a power connector (above) and a data cable which run 1:1 port to SATA drive.
all the different ports, plugs, cables, pins, for IDE, SATA, USB, IEEE 1394, Mini, Micro. can get very confusing!

So data sata cables are 7 pin right? well then what about 3ware Multilane - Serial ATA / SAS cable - 8-Lane - 7 pin Serial ATA. it has 7 female, 7pin ends going into one 7 pin male end. so everything is 7 pin for data.

Link for cable is here http://www.compusa.com/applications/searchtools/item-Details.asp?EdpNo=2920412&SRCCODE=LSCMPUSA&cm_mmc_o=-ddCjC1bELltzywCjC-d2CjCdwwp&AffiliateID=dlUPo6w0KBI-qo9pVbZdbqk_huKv7CG8Zg ,http://www.buy.com/prod/204153722.html , and http://www.pcconnectionexpress.com/IPA/Shop/Product/Detail.htm?sku=7486349&SourceID=k284026&cm_mmc=GAN-_-InvisibleHand-_-Primary-_-k284026&clickid=0004ba9f648127140a423107fcae3188 .

I understand that you still need power but those are easy to find or make. So would this work to connect 7 hdd's to one sata port and be readable? not sure why you would need to connect 7 hdd, but they do have cables that have 2, 3, 4, 7, into 1.
If i did try this 7 pin cable and connected it to my logic board (i use mac so no motherboard) with 7 hdds on their own power source what, in your opinion, might happen?

 

[Paperdoc]

The cable you linked to is specifically for use with particular designs of RAID controller cards. These particular cards do not have one SATA connector per drive they will control. Instead they have a special multi-port connector and one of these cables plugs into it, then connects to each individual HDD in your RAID array. This is part of designing your own RAID system, if that's what you plan. The cable does NOT allow you to simply string together a bunch of SATA drives off a SINGLE standard SATA port.

No matter how it is done, logically and electrically, one SATA port can only deal with ONE SATA HDD. (The RAID cards referenced have multiple SATA ports in their controller structure, but use a special connector for them.) The only exception to this is what is called support for Port Multiplier technology, with which I am not familiar. If it is built into a SATA port, it appears to allow that one SATA port to operate several SATA units ONLY if the several units are mounted in a system that has Port Multiplier circuitry to control the connections of the drives to the single host port. This system sometimes appears in external drive units that have more than one SATA HDD inside them.

 

[hang-the-9]

So data sata cables are 7 pin right? well then what about 3ware Multilane - Serial ATA / SAS cable - 8-Lane - 7 pin Serial ATA. it has 7 female, 7pin ends going into one 7 pin male end. so everything is 7 pin for data.

Link for cable is here http://www.compusa.com/applications/searchtools/item-Details.asp?EdpNo=2920412&SRCCODE=LSCMPUSA&cm_mmc_o=-ddCjC1bELltzywCjC-d2CjCdwwp&AffiliateID=dlUPo6w0KBI-qo9pVbZdbqk_huKv7CG8Zg ,http://www.buy.com/prod/204153722.html , and http://www.pcconnectionexpress.com/IPA/Shop/Product/Detail.htm?sku=7486349&SourceID=k284026&cm_mmc=GAN-_-InvisibleHand-_-Primary-_-k284026&clickid=0004ba9f648127140a423107fcae3188 .

I understand that you still need power but those are easy to find or make. So would this work to connect 7 hdd's to one sata port and be readable? not sure why you would need to connect 7 hdd, but they do have cables that have 2, 3, 4, 7, into 1.
If i did try this 7 pin cable and connected it to my logic board (i use mac so no motherboard) with 7 hdds on their own power source what, in your opinion, might happen?

I don't think you read the description on that product. It connects to individual ports on a RAID card, not to one. This cable is just to tidy up wiring so you can use one cable routed to a break-out box which again splits the cables up into individual cables. There is no cable that will split a single SATA port to two drives.

Plus your MAC has a motherboard, just because it's sealed and protected by the wrath of the Apple mystics if you try to stray from their chosen path does not mean it's not a regular computer. It's got a motherboard same as a Dell or anything else. "Logic board" "motherboard" "system board" all mean the same thing. It's like saying in Europe they drive automobiles but in the US we drive cars.

"The Multi-lane SATA cable/connection system is fast, secure, simple, and clutter free. It combines the RAID controller's eight SATA ports into a single locked connection. Eight lanes of 3Gb/s SATA traffic travel through just one cable from the RAID controller to the system backplane or to up to eight hard drives with a breakout cable.
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