Need help selecting Mini-Sas to Sata cables!

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davidm71

[H]ard|Gawd
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Feb 11, 2004
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Hi,

I'm about to purchase an Areca 1882I and it looks like it doesn't come with SATA cables. I have four 300gb Enterprise Velociraptors waiting to be hooked up and not sure about what cables to get. On Newegg they have Areca cables but they look short on the ends where they separate and not 6gb/Sec type. Drives arent 6gb/sec I know but may need them in the future when I go SSD Raid. Anyone have any cable suggestions?

Thank you.

Raid Noob..
 
It depends on which model # you order, bare drive or kit SAS or Kit SATA. Most of the models from Newegg and Amazon come with enough cables for the ports on the cards, and the SATA breakout cables have enough space to make it easily to adjacent drives. There is no difference between standard length SATA cables, SATA1 to SATA3. The only difference is ~SATA2 they started offering cables with metal locking clips of dubious value.
 
Doesn't look like it on this one. Comes with two cables but they're not sata.
 
You have to call newegg. Some of their cards come with no cables, some with SFF-8087-8087 and some SFF8087-SATA. You need to find out which model has which cables, don't just go by the picture.
 
Again, there is no difference between 3G and 6G cables. SAS cables are specced by length, direction and connector type(s), that is it. You can read more at http://www.ioisas.com/Cable/ In any case, you are looking for a SFF-8087 -> SATA forward breakout cable (There are also reverse breakout cables, that is NOT what you want and sometimes the cable description doesn't specify which it is)
 
For the same reason in the 80's and 90's every cable said "Digital" on it (Even if they were analog cables, hell even products like CD cleaners said digital on it). The same reason monster cable advertises their cables as having 2x the bandwidth of other HDMI cables. So it looks newer and better than the older ones still laying around, and so they can try and charge more. It's marketing, that is it. The only true differences between some of these cables is that some have I2C or some other sideband cable attached, which only matters if you have a compliant HBA and a compliant enclosure.

Also, if you look at the page you pointed to, you will see this:

6Gb Cables: Compatible with all 6Gb/s and 3 Gb/s products

3Gb Cables: Compatible with all 6Gb/s and 3 Gb/s products
 
Yeah but I read some guy on Newegg somewhere said his ssd performance was down because of the 6gb/s cable. Thats what I read.. I could be or he could have been mistaken..
 
He was mistaken, or he had an out-of-spec cable that happened to be stamped SATA2. Lastly, 90%+ of the people posting on newegg are absolute morons who have no clue what they are doing!
 
mwroobel said:
For the same reason in the 80's and 90's every cable said "Digital" on it (Even if they were analog cables, hell even products like CD cleaners said digital on it). The same reason monster cable advertises their cables as having 2x the bandwidth of other HDMI cables. So it looks newer and better than the older ones still laying around, and so they can try and charge more. It's marketing, that is it.
Click to expand...

Spot on, I remember Popular Mechanics and Crutchfield debunking most of those absurd claims in the 90's. Fast forward 20 years later and the same nonsense. I immediately thought of "Monster" and "gold plated" when I read that !
 
You should read the sound shootout between oxygen free monster cable speaker wire and coat hangers that have been straightened out!

http://consumerist.com/2008/03/do-coat-hangers-sound-as-good-monster-cables.html

In cases where there are specific, functional differences between specs (Ultra2 vs U320 SCSI cables for instance, or Cat3 vs Cat5 vs Cat5e vs Cat6 (depending on length) then yes, you need to buy the cable specced to your standard because the previous model wasn't "enough". But in cases where there is no spec difference between the cable types it doesn't matter.
 
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