Cable matters? SATA vs. SATA II vs. sas

[toddbailey]

are these interchangable? ie: can I use my sata cables on a single port sas device?

 

[inzone]

No sata cables are different from sas cables and therefore the ports are different as well. For a sas cable you need a sas port to plug it into.

 

[Ubrales]

SATA1 and SATA2 have little or no difference, but SAS is completely different. Besides, for SAS you will need a separate SAS controller card.

 

[toddbailey]

excuse me?

In my Hp xw8400, I pulled a sas cable and a sata cable, physically they are identical, electrically they have the same number of connection.

So where are you getting your information?

 

[Ubrales]

excuse me?

In my Hp xw8400, I pulled a sas cable and a sata cable, physically they are identical, electrically they have the same number of connection.

So where are you getting your information?

SAS and SATA controllers are different. This may explain in more detail: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_attached_SCSI
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_ATA

And BTW, it you compared two cables and they are identical, they are interchangeable.

 

[tokencode]

That is not true, SAS and SATA can use identical cables if it is the right SAS connector type. The difference is the voltage used, therefore SAS cables can be significantly longer than SATA cables which are limited to 3ft (6.5ft for eSATA)

 

[toddbailey]

Actually after a lot of research I found several variations to sas and sata with the external connectors different some of the time, and internal drives may or may not be directly interchangable.

My box has 2 sas 3 1/2 drives that use separate cables, power and data but use the standard sata connectors and plug into sas ports on the mb. My replacement 2 1/2 drive a Fuji #MAY2073 however uses a sas-29 aka sff-8482 which is a unified connector with power and data in one.

I found 2 variations on newegg, one had all negative feedback, the other had 1 posting staying it did what they needed to do, I ordered this one but it won't arrive until next week. For $6.99 not a huge gamble, however I do wonder why the cable has 2 data cables coming from it, possibly for dual port 600 gb/s transfer rate device.