SATA II or SATA III

[Helltech]

I was going to get newer, longer SATA cables for my HDD's and DVD drive. I know SATA III (at least the ones I was looking at) are bakwards compatible, but are they even worth it? They are a few dollars more, I'm just curious being as I never had any before and I couldn't really find the answer.

 

[baddad]

Unless you have SATA III devices theres no need for the more costly cables.

 

[Helltech]

Unless you have SATA III devices theres no need for the more costly cables.

Ahh alright. I figured it might increase speeds trasfer rates in the HDDs but ill save the money, thanks.

 

[4745454b]

??? Don't they use the same cable? Having the SATAIII won't make your drive faster then SATAII either. The physical drives can't max out SATAI, so it makes no difference. SATAIII is for SSDs. Spinning harddrives are 130MBps avg, which is below SATAI. THE SPEED OF THE BUS WON'T MAKE YOUR DEVICES FASTER!

 

[jitpublisher]

Really now come on, did you seriously think that putting SATA III cables on an SATA II drive (If they even fit) would make it faster? Oh boy oh boy oh boy oh boy.
I get a lot of static for being too cynical here sometimes, but my god who ever said there are no stupid questions have apparently never spent much time reading the forums here on Toms.

 

[blackhawk1928]

Buddy, no hard drive can even come close to maxing out SATA I...let alone SATA II.
Even extremely fast Raid Configurations with todays high performance hard drives can acheive usually a couple hundred MB/s transfers...SATA I is some 1.5GB/s i think, SATA II is twice that at 3GB/s and SATA III is twice that at 6GB/s...i think according to my resources. (I maybe a bit wrong). A single very fast SSD can't max SATA I...
The only way to break the SATA transfer barriers is when you start doing Raid Configurations with very fast SSD's. Or Crazy raid configurations with fast hard drives like 20HD's in raid 0.
So to answer your question...for you SATA II will do everything you need.

 

[4745454b]

What people call SATAI is 1.5Gbps, not 1.5GBps. Once you change to Bytes, its 150MBps. 150GBps, 300GBps, and now 600GBps. RAID won't max it out either, as each drive is plugged into its own port. Only SSDs will max out a port.

 

[blackhawk1928]

^Agree, however I know, i meant to say Bits...my error for making a capital B. Bytes are 8 times larger then Bits.