SATA Cables

[Sephiroth686]

Hello,

I currently have a SATA drive and I'm going to be buying a new, larger HD soon. I have been reading up as much as I can on the new SATA standard before I do so.

I have read in the SATA II sticky at the top of the forum that all SATA drives use the same data cables and the only difference between SATA & SATA II are the new features. However I'm confused in the listing of cables and if my motherboard SATA connections will take a newer SATA II drive.

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/productlist.php?groupid=701&catid=48&sortby=nameAsc&subid=196&mfrid=

On this page there are two silver AKASA cables, one named SATA 2 and one named SATA. Does this mean the newer drives can use different cables with different connections?

Any help would be appreciated.

 

[jak731]

either will work, for MBs that dont support SATA2, you just have to change the jumper settings on the HDD to make it a SATA drive

 

[rpstewart]

There is no such standard as SATAII, it's just a marketing name which has been picked up by the manufacturers. SATA-II was the committee which drew up the 300MB/s interface standard etc.

Most manufacturers use jumpers to force the interface speed down to 150Mb/s for compatability with controllers which can't auto negotiate the interface speed. Hitachi on the other hand use the Drive Feature Tool software which is pretty much useless these days since the newer Hitachis ship with the interface running at 300MB/s so if you need to turn it down you need to use a second PC to do it.