Question about internal SATA cables

[Wolf52]

I am thinking about buying one of these, http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136218

but when i went to look for a cable to connect it to the motherboard (since its OEM) i noticed that the only ones which had transfer rates listed could only boast about 1.5 gb/s. Unless im interpreting this wrong, since the hard drive can do up to 3 gb/s, wouldn't the cable alone be cutting my hard drive's performance by half?

 

[Genocidicbunny]

Simply look for SATA II cables. As long as the cable is specified as SATA II it will support 3 Gb/s transfer rates ( Note, that not 3 Gigabytes but 3 Gigabits which in reality is only 375 Megabytes per second).

Also, I might be wrong here, but most mainstream HDD's can't really go above 30MB/s transfer speeds ( Sketchy on this info thouhg ).

 

[GoodGame]

Also be sure the mobo supports the SATAII as well. If it's a recent make, then it probably does.

 

[Speedo]

Also, I might be wrong here, but most mainstream HDD's can't really go above 30MB/s transfer speeds ( Sketchy on this info thouhg ).

I don't have HD Tach installed ATM so I can't pull up exact numbers, but IIRC most standard drives have average read rates of ~35-45 MB/s. They will hit 50-60-ish on the outer edges of the platter, and get to 120 or so on burst speeds (from the cache).

 

[Zelig]

I don't have HD Tach installed ATM so I can't pull up exact numbers, but IIRC most standard drives have average read rates of ~35-45 MB/s. They will hit 50-60-ish on the outer edges of the platter, and get to 120 or so on burst speeds (from the cache).

Whoa, you guys are behind the times, modern 7200rpm drives give from about 50-100 MB/s, averaging around 80 MB/s.

stickciv: Only thing limited to ~30MB/s are USB 2.0 connected drives, which is why USB is a brutal connection to use for hard drives.

 

[Wolf52]

Hmm, i'm a bit confused now. I could use SATA II cables on a plain SATA drive? My motherboard is about 2 1/2 years old now, so idk if it could support that anyway. Basically then, would normal SATA cables only get me about half of the speed that i would normally get out of the drive?

 

[Genocidicbunny]

You can indeed use SATA II cables with a SATA I drive.

 

[Speedo]

Whoa, you guys are behind the times, modern 7200rpm drives give from about 50-100 MB/s, averaging around 80 MB/s.

Not quite... the WD VelociRaptor (10k RPM) is to my knowledge the fastest non-SCSI drive on the market, and it just barely scrapes out 100 MB/s average read speeds.

 

[Zelig]

Sata I and II are fully back/forwards compatible with any equipment.

It gets more muddy because SATA 3 Gbit/s is technically NOT SATA II.

In any case, don't worry about it too much, whatever stuff you use that's SATA (as long as it isn't esata) will likely work together, and you won't be able to tell any difference in performance.

Not quite... the WD VelociRaptor (10k RPM) is to my knowledge the fastest non-SCSI drive on the market, and it just barely scrapes out 100 MB/s average read speeds.

The Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 drives have been out for nearly a year now, and are good for the numbers I mentioned:
http://www.trustedreviews.com/stora...te-Barracuda-7200-11-1-Terabyte-Hard-Drive/p3