Sata II vs Sata III Cables?

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shantd

Gawd
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Aug 2, 2008
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I was at Fryes today looking for a couple sata cables and noticed that some are rated SATA II and some SATA III. When I asked the employee about it he said the cable has no impact on data transfer speed.

Obviously I got the fastest cables just in case, but I am curious what you guys think. Do high-price cables translate to faster data transfer rates?
 
Thanks, figured as much but one package says 3.0 Gb/s and the other says 6.0 GB/s, and the latter is about 3 times as thick so I figured I'd ask. You never know what you don't know.
 
There is no such thing as SATA Rev 3.x certified cables. SATA cables all have the same AWG too, about the only thing they could do it plate the SATA connector pins differently for better signal integrity.
I'm surprised Monster isn't selling snake-oil SATA Rev 3 cables yet...
 
BTW, SMART has an attribute that tracks the ECC corrections for the data transmission so if it made any difference you would see a high # in the Raw Value for the UltraDMA CRC Error Count.
 
good thing you were not at best buy, they would have told you they can make your computer run faster
 
jiminator said:
good thing you were not at best buy, they would have told you they can make your computer run faster
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They are so dumb...one of the sales reps kept telling me that the television i was buying didn't do 1080p even though the specs on the box clearly stated that it did. After a minute, I just tuned the kid out. He kept pushing me into a Sony TV that was much more expensive. I wonder what kind of training these guys do (if any).

Once, I was just curious what kind of motherboard was in a $1200 gaming PC they were selling. The rep had no clue what I was talking about and had to get help. Turned out it was generic no name mATX board, with cheap ass memory, decent CPU and mid range card. The rep who came to me with the specs gave me this look like yeah its a rip off when he told me.
 
I recently did have a problem with a SATA II cable not agreeing with a SATA III port. My hard drive would sometimes disappear. I swapped the cable for a SATA III cable I've problem free ever since.
 
drescherjm said:
BTW, SMART has an attribute that tracks the ECC corrections for the data transmission so if it made any difference you would see a high # in the Raw Value for the UltraDMA CRC Error Count.
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Just as an addendum to dresherjms excellent point, in most consumer drives, the UltraDMA CRC count is a from-day-1 counter (like hours or start/stop) and does not reset at powerdown or decrease like some other attributes (pending, etc). It is possible a drive could have a number or errors from a previous install (bad cable, bad controller) and still be ok. If you don't have a historical reference of your SMART values, look at this atttributes number now, and then continue over time and see if it increases from where it is now.
 
To say all the SATA cables are the same is a bit misleading.

Certainly there is a standard, but some cables might meet an even higher standard.

Certainly there are latching and non-latching connectors. Some latches might be more suitable for some uses.

I have a junk box of cables. I use the ones that are the correct length for what I want to do. That seems to be the best guage I have found.

----

I just got back from vacation and I forgot I had taken my internal backup ans placed it in an external case. Just in case some one wanted to take it off site. I have to put it back now.
 
psy81 said:
I recently did have a problem with a SATA II cable not agreeing with a SATA III port. My hard drive would sometimes disappear. I swapped the cable for a SATA III cable I've problem free ever since.
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That would be because it was either a bad or out-of-spec cable, not because it was a "SATA2" cable vs a "SATA3" cable.
 
GeorgeHR said:
To say all the SATA cables are the same is a bit misleading.

Certainly there is a standard, but some cables might meet an even higher standard.

Certainly there are latching and non-latching connectors. Some latches might be more suitable for some uses.

I have a junk box of cables. I use the ones that are the correct length for what I want to do. That seems to be the best guage I have found.

----

I just got back from vacation and I forgot I had taken my internal backup ans placed it in an external case. Just in case some one wanted to take it off site. I have to put it back now.
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Well, if they are in spec they all at least meet a specific standard, so they are all "good enough" in that sense. The metal latching connectors showed up about the same time as SATA2 drives started showing up. The PHY internal SATA connection spec was defined in 1.0 and hasn't changed since. 2.0 Upped the speed buut made no cable spec changes. 3.0 added additional connectors and changes in eSATA but still maintains signal integrity over standard spec cables.
 
This came with my ASRock A75 Extreme6 motherboard last night from NewEgg

photo.jpg
 
That's all marketing. If you are making a cable today and it supports 6Gb/s, that is what you are going to put on the package. It's like the old days when every package had the word "Digital" on it. Even analog cables humorously enough.
 
but... but.... the digital sata cables are better....

...wanting to slap the monster cable marketing people, worst offenders, screwing clueless people for years with their bullshit, and suing everyone that uses monster as a part of their name.
 
Best Buy employee's get about an hour of training on a computer that's pretty much it! Most of the employee's have no clue about what they are trying to sell you and they really don't care to learn as long as there still getting paid to be clueless.I worked for best buy for over 2 years.I lost count of how many times i've heard employee's give false information.I would only shop there as a last resort.
 
Homey D. Clown said:
Best Buy employee's get about an hour of training on a computer that's pretty much it! Most of the employee's have no clue about what they are trying to sell you and they really don't care to learn as long as there still getting paid to be clueless.I worked for best buy for over 2 years.I lost count of how many times i've heard employee's give false information.I would only shop there as a last resort.
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And you forget they will sell you a laptop filled with shit (enthusiastically) is there is a $5 Spiff in it for them over the better choice sitting next to it!
 
Funny Story! When I worked there I wasn't geek squad but I had a geek squad agent come to me and tell me that he pulled the hardrive out of a computer and noticed a little button on the front of it so he pushed it and a small disk popped out,he wanted to know if he had broke it!
 
The best SATA cables are the SATAX cables. They have an Unobtainium sheathing that protects the signal from tachyon interference.
 
nah, the satax^2 cables, when used in a diamond configuration matrix, can actually allow data to time travel, to where it is available before it is requested.
 
jiminator said:
nah, the satax^2 cables, when used in a diamond configuration matrix, can actually allow data to time travel, to where it is available before it is requested.
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They came out with the SATAX^2 rev2.0 yesterday. These things are so fast they load information before you've even thought of doing something. Today I went to go play BF3 and noticed that the game had been up and running for 6 hours prior to me even thinking about it! AMAZING!
 
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JoeUser said:
They came out with the SATAX^2 rev2.0 yesterday. These things are so fast they load information before you've even thought of doing something. Today I went to go play BF3 and noticed that the game had been up and running for 6 hours prior to me even thinking about it! AMAZING!
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Yeah, well, revision 3.0 comes out next week, and is so advanced it went back in time and was actually available before 2.0 was.
 
Oh fuck. I just plugged a couple into my computer and turned it on...

I got a flashing message:

does not compute....
solution: terminate

and now I can no longer access that computer. I know it is doing something, I am just not sure what. I went to unplug it and got a nasty shock...
 
Mildly interesting relevant article, especially some of the interesting tests:

During our testing, we also tested out a couple of often not recommended practices: bending your SATA cable at right angles. Many motherboard vendors recommend against putting right-angles into the cables during system builds so we took a cable and put about 15 right-angle kinks in it: no difference. We also took a 36-inch cable and tightly wrapped around a hot PSU cable: no difference.

What about joining two 36-inch cables end-to-end using male-to-male connectors? That’s about 30-inches outside the SATA spec for cable length: No. Frakking. Difference. The only thing that stopped SATA dead in its tracks was running three 36-inch SATA cables end-to-end using cable No. 3, No. 4 and No 11. That’s nine feet of cables kids. Don’t try this at home!
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From: http://www.maximumpc.com/article/fe..._down_your_data_transfers_max_pc_investigates
 
Old Hippie said:
And your point is?
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My point is even ASRock tells you that a cable is specifically designed for 6Gbps, and Best Buy and Fryes isn't the only one guilty of doing so. Are you usually this rude? Lighten up. :rolleyes:
 
Azhar said:
My point is even ASRock tells you that a cable is specifically designed for 6Gbps, and Best Buy and Fryes isn't the only one guilty of doing so. Are you usually this rude? Lighten up. :rolleyes:
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LOL! That was light! :)

As I'm sure you know there's been many threads about this since SATA3/6 emerged.

I had no idea why you'd post that pic hence my question.

I'm sorry if I offended you but since the whole thread is a farce I'd suggest you do the same. :)
 
Azhar said:
My point is even ASRock tells you that a cable is specifically designed for 6Gbps, and Best Buy and Fryes isn't the only one guilty of doing so. Are you usually this rude? Lighten up. :rolleyes:
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Your original post really didn't make much sense, but then again, neither does this thread! :D

All internal SATA cables are the same.
Even ones from way back in the early-2000's are capable of 6Gbps transfer rates.

The only additional thing you are paying for with "SATA-III capable" cables is the addition of empty space in your wallet.
 
blackhand1001 said:
Make sure you get the 3d hdmi cable as well.
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HDMI actually does have 2 types of cables (Unlike SATA), Category 1 (Standard) and Category 2 (High Speed). At 1 meter or so any HDMI cable will do, but in longer lengths and at higher resolutions (actual frequency ranges) there are physical differences which come into play.
 
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