Is there really a SATA 1 and SATA II rated cable?  I am seeing a lot of advertisements for cables that just say SATA, and then some that specifically say SATA II. 

I've seen a few that say SATA III.

As far as I know, they're all compatible. SATA III might have a length limit though?

If you do some searching, you'll find that some people say that SATA I, II or III are marketing ploys. Maybe there is some truth to this, I don't know, but supposedly, they are really all the same.

 

We discussed this a little bit in this thread.

 

I use SATA I cables in my unRAID built that I bought from MonoPrice and they work fine.

 

From what I understand, most hard drives do not write at speeds that a SATA III cable is rated at anyways, so at this point it doesn't make much of a difference what cable you were to use.

From what I understand, most hard drives do not write at speeds that a SATA III cable is rated at anyways, so at this point it doesn't make much of a difference what cable you were to use.

 

I'm not sure that is true.  Even though the data transfer to magnetic disk cannot achieve a sustainable 6Gb/s, I would hope that two SATA3 devices would be able to reach 6Gb/s on the cable between them.

From what I understand, most hard drives do not write at speeds that a SATA III cable is rated at anyways, so at this point it doesn't make much of a difference what cable you were to use.

 

I'm not sure that is true.  Even though the data transfer to magnetic disk cannot achieve a sustainable 6Gb/s, I would hope that two SATA3 devices would be able to reach 6Gb/s on the cable between them.

 

I'll give you that, I should have worded my sentence better. I was alluding to the point you made about the data transfer rates, but I didn't really do a good job at making that part clear.

OK, I ordered 4 - 7" "SATA II" cables.  pretty cheap on ebay but seller had a 99.6% rating and it's not like I was going to be out lots of money so I'd give it a shot.''

 

They came in today and other than just short, they are really narrow.  The width of the cable is probably 2/3 or less of the cables I have.  I was a little worried, but put them on the HD's that are going in the UnRAID server.  They seem to be fine.  I could copy from drive to drive at 100 MB/sec internally and 70's - 80's externally.  I haven't got those speeds in a while.

Curious how much you paid for those.  I have dozens of sata cables in a box, that I've collected over time.  Every motherboard I get comes with 6 or 8 cables and I never use them.

There is no difference between the cables, but often times people will call the latching cables Sata II cables.