Sata type for hardrive?

[sgtflippers]

I have a WD Blue (WD10EZEX) 1TB SATA3 6GB/s 7200RPM 64MB Cache hard drive, and its currently connected to a sata2 cable. i was just wondering if i would get any increase in performance if i got a sata3 cable instead.

 

[phil22]

No you wouldn't, for two reasons:

1. The performance of your SATA III hard drive is determined by the specification of the SATA ports on your computer's motherboard. If the ports are SATA II, a SATA III drive's performance will be limited to SATA II

2. There's no such thing as a SATA III cable. It's just a marketing ploy to charge more money for them. All SATA cables are the same as regards SATA specification, they are just SATA cables. The manufacturing quality may vary across different brands, but that's all.

 

[RealBeast]

^ +1. Everything phil said.

Like most stuff with computers there is a lot of marketing BS. For a HDD you don't really need to attach to a SATA III port since the drive cannot even saturate a SATA II port. Even with an SSD it only makes a small difference, where reads and writes are sequential and can exceed the SATA II port bandwidth.

 

[sgtflippers]

my motherboard has a sata3 connector and that's not entirely true, Ive tested my ssd with the sata2 and sata3 cables and the sata3 was faster

 

[sgtflippers]

so there's no point in upgrading right?

 

[RealBeast]

so there's no point in upgrading right?

Nope.

 

[sgtflippers]

Best answer selected by sgtflippers.

 

[phil22]

my motherboard has a sata3 connector and that's not entirely true, Ive tested my ssd with the sata2 and sata3 cables and the sata3 was faster

It was just a better quality cable, that's why performance was better.
I say again, all SATA cables are the same except for quality.

So the moral is, buy the best quality cables you can afford, but don't fall for the con that a cable advertised as "SATA III" is somehow technically different to a SATA II cable internally, because it isn't.