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eSATA cables not all created equal! - cautionary note

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About a month ago, I posted a question about a Vantec drive bay device for which the eSATA port was not working. http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1819233&highlight=vantec

Vantec support thought my eSATA cables were the problem, so they sent one, and, to my surprise, the Vantec eSATA port now works fine. So the issue was my original eSATA cable. I've gotten these cables from NewEgg or Amazon, the usual suppliers. To be fair, I haven't tested all of my collection of 4-5 eSATA cables. I assumed that a cable is a cable is a cable is ... but I was wrong. At least now I have a fully functional drive bay device with very convenient USB and eSATA ports, plus a multiple card readers.

The good cable was made by Lian Yu, but I could not find cables made by this company on either Amazon or NewEgg, and a search for the manufacturer didn't produce useful results either.
 
Yeah, I thought I was having the WORST luck with three hard drives. I though all of them died within a few weeks of each other. The drives turned out to be fine, it was the cheap ass Rosewill SATA cables I was using.

I changed cables and the hard drives purred along with no errors or clicks anymore.
 
A cable is never just a cable. Any cable can have problems if it's cheaply made.

I've had to swap out SATA, HDMI, Power cables, you name it.
 
Hmm.. I must have better luck with that. I don't recall ever having a bad SATA cable for the 200 to 300 drives I manage. Although I use either SAS cables or the cables that come with the motherboards I have a large collection of those..
 
I didn't think it could be a bad SATA cable either. So I swapped out a drive that was erroring. The new drive was still erroring. Swapped out the SATA cable in that slot and it stopped erroring.
 
Here is a reply I got from Vantec, to an email question about cables.

There is a standard on many part of the connector except the depth when you insert it in. Some cable will not allow full insertion resulting in no contact and device not working. I have tested by simply trimming off and it works just fine, so I found one cable that can extend further for you. You can do the same for your cable, but make sure you have a sharp cutter and do not trim too far exposing the wire.
Click to expand...
So I compared my old eSATA cable with the one they sent me. Their cable's plug seems to be about 1/32 inch or less longer than my eSATA cable, definitely a difference. So I have a way to bring my cables into "compliance." :)
 
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