May 28, 200917 yr Hi, I have some SATA cables lying around. How can I tell if they are SATA I or SATA 2? Thanks.
May 28, 200917 yr I don't think you can. Perhaps someone else will have an idea. If they aren't new, I would purchase the very best quality I could find. We are learning that these cables are often the weak point, in the SATA drive subsystem. And locking connectors can really save you a lot of grief. This thread has some discussion about SATA cable quality, and a link to other comments.
May 28, 200917 yr I don't think you can. Perhaps someone else will have an idea. If they aren't new, I would purchase the very best quality I could find. We are learning that these cables are often the weak point, in the SATA drive subsystem. And locking connectors can really save you a lot of grief. This thread has some discussion about SATA cable quality, and a link to other comments. There may, or may not be a difference... It is really hard to tell if it is the chipsets at the ends of the cables (on the disk and disk controller) are the only improvements, or if the cabling and the connectors have to be of tighter tolerances for the higher bit rate. I would think the latter... but it might be the cable company's marketing dept at work too... (An older cable might meet both specs, or just the older slower rate, or neither , but they can charge a bit more if labeled SATA2) With the short lengths we have in our servers, an older SATA1 cable might work... even on an SATA2 drive/controller. The problem is, the connectors are the same... and the cables look the same... and nothing but a laboratory test instrument would know for sure how well it works. I wonder if some of the weird disk errors we see with disks going off-line or timing out might be to the mis-match of cable and data speeds. As already said, just get the best quality cables you can... (and price is not the indication of quality...) I'd shop at monoprice.com for good cables at fair prices. Joe L.
June 4, 200917 yr I never knew this was an issue, in fact, I didn't even know there were SATA I and SATA II cables before now, I thought they were all the same. Hence, I don't claim to have even a modicum of expertise in this issue. However, while reading this, a somewhat simple test occurred to me - please tell me if this would work: To test out a cable (I'll call it Cable X), you would have to already have the following: 1) Two SATA cables that you know to be SATA II (let's call them Cable A and Cable B). 2) A motherboard with SATA II slots (or an additional PCI-e card with SATA II slots) 3) Two SATA II hard drives (HDD A and HDD B) 4) All the other normal components of a computer, CPU, RAM, PSU, etc... Procedure: 1) Hook up Cable A to HDD A and the motherboard/PCI-e card. 2) Hook up Cable B to HDD B and the motherboard/PCI-e card. 3) Boot the computer. 4) Choose a largish file (maybe 1 - 5 GB), then copy it from HDD A to HDD B. 5) Either time the transfer with a stopwatch (I wouldn't trust the OS), or monitor the transfer speed, or both. 6) Delete the file from HDD B and shut down the computer. 7) Replace Cable B with Cable X. 8 ) Boot the computer. 9) Copy the same file from HDD A to HDD B. 10) Again, time it or monitor the transfer speed, or both. If the times/transfer speed are the same, then you know you Cable X is a SATA II cable. If the second transfer takes roughly twice as long as the first one, or if it goes at roughly half the speed, then you know Cable X is a SATA I cable. It seems pretty straight forward to me, though maybe a bit time consuming. Does anyone see any reason why it wouldn't work?
June 4, 200917 yr It seems pretty straight forward to me, though maybe a bit time consuming. Does anyone see any reason why it wouldn't work? Only one. The SATA spec allows for some pretty long cables. For the lengths we use in our servers, it is very possible for an SATA I cable to perform well enough at SATA II speeds to not cause excessive errors.... or perhaps have only an occasional error. Let's say one every billion or so... oops... that's still a lot of errors when you have a 1TB drive with 8 billion bits. Also, cables manufactured prior to SATA II might be easily capable of the higher speed... or not... impossible to say. Only way is to transfer LOTS of data across multiple cables at the same time and compare files. All you need is one bit error to make a program fail. (Although, a single bit might not make a movie unwatchable... it might make a document unreadable) So, the only flaw in your logic is that the test might not detect an error... regardless of the cable used. It might detect a bad cable, but only if the drive handshaking degrades the bit rate to SATA I speeds. Joe L.
June 4, 200917 yr I don't think there is much difference in the cables. Perhaps some extra shielding and better connectors.(latching) Frankly, it's not like it's SCSI Where you had parallel bits at higher voltages and required echo canceling(terminators). As long as you are within the 18inches you should be fine. If the times/transfer speed are the same, then you know you Cable X is a SATA II cable. If the second transfer takes roughly twice as long as the first one, or if it goes at roughly half the speed, then you know Cable X is a SATA I cable. This is not like P-ATA where you have a 40 conductor cable or an 80 conductor cable. Chances are if you use an SATA-1 cable on an SATA-II system and are within length specs you should be fine. At the very least, I've used them indiscriminately without issue. Where this does matter is in eSata connections. I.E. Connections outside the box. Then you want the best product you can afford. Here is where they have extra shielding on purpose.
June 4, 200917 yr http://www.overclock.net/faqs/99397-info-there-difference-between-sata-sata2.html http://forums.techarena.in/hardware-peripherals/1104590.htm http://forums.techpowerup.com/showthread.php?t=14515 http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/178063-32-sata-cable http://www.sata-io.org/developers/naming_guidelines.asp From these posts, it seems that SATA II cables are marketing labels mostly. Some may have latches. some may have better quality connectors... but according to the disk drive manufacturer, the cables themselves are the same. There are drives and controllers that work at SATA-1, -2 and (eventually) -3 speeds... but they use the same cables.
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