How often do you replace your HDD cables

[TapRackPull]

Replacing HDD cables is likely the easiest/cheapest preventative maintenance possible. Recently, though, I have had what started off as major issues end up being extremely easy fixes.

 

To start off with I have dozens of extra SATA cables. some are locking, others aren't. But I'm lazy?

 

In the last 2 weeks I had my Parity drive as well as 3 others show up as problematic. After considerable hemming and hawing I replaced the cables and it fixed the issues.

 

But it made me wonder, is their a schedule that anyone keeps to for replacing cables to ensure smooth operation?

[pwm]

I never replace my SATA cables, unless I have issues with one. If they work, they work. So no scheduled replacements.

 

They should normally not age in any way that matters during the normal liftetime of a computer. The main exception is if there are vibrations heavy enough that there are movement of a connector.

But I may throw cables from old computers when I build a new machine, since it's hard to keep track of what specification the older cables were made for. Not all cables have a clear marking of supported SATA standard. Using a SATA 2 (3 Gbit/s) cable with a drive supporting SATA 3 (6 Gbit/s) is not a good idea. And consumer-grade cables have a very thin layer of gold plating on the connectors - they are designed to handle very few connect/disconnect cycles compared to industrial grade connectors.

[Frank1940]

12 hours ago, TapRackPull said:

some are locking,

 

Keep this in the back of your mind.  I am not sure if any other manufacturers have done this or not.  (Can't believe that WD would be the only manufacturer who felt that this change was necessary...)

 

      https://support.wdc.com/knowledgebase/answer.aspx?ID=10477