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2 SATA3 hard drives, only one SATA3 cable

I

imported_Jid

Member
So while I was waiting for some of my build parts to come in the mail I went in to a local shop and picked up a WD 640GB SATAIII hard drive. Now I unpack it all and realize I've only 1 SATAIII cable and 2 SATAII cables with the mobo, the other drive is a WD 1TB SATAIII HD and the idea was to have the 640GB be OS and the 1TB programs/games/page file. I figured I'd try this config since I've read on forums so many times that it speeds things up and I'm too cheap and scared to adopt SSD right now.

So which drive in this setup, if any, would benefit more from the SATAIII connection?

I've got tigerdirect and canadacomputers localy but don't know if they have these cables, NCIX probably does but +45min drive for a cable seems stupid. I'll just order it to come in the mail and use SATAII in the meantime.
 
What is the difference? Benchmark yourself and see the difference of the 2 cables within the same hard drive.
 
Yeah I feel stupid for posting that now. On a related note, is there even a difference between SATAII and SATAIII cables? They look the same to me aside from the 6G rating printed on one of them, ASUS makes it sound like it's the only one that'll work for the 6Gbps connection.
 
Its all marketing and it gets the best of us. I can be a bit ocd so I like for all my cables to match but a simple google search indicates that there is no difference between sata 2 and sata 3 cables.
 
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The sata 6 spec runs at like 6Ghz signal speeds so it actually MAY need a better cable (remember ata 33-> ata 66?)

In any case, those HD's will barely max out SATA 1, let alone SATA 2.

You really only need(can utilize) SATA 3 for an SSD at this point
 
extide said:
The sata 6 spec runs at like 6Ghz signal speeds so it actually MAY need a better cable (remember ata 33-> ata 66?)

In any case, those HD's will barely max out SATA 1, let alone SATA 2.

You really only need(can utilize) SATA 3 for an SSD at this point
Click to expand...

That's what I figured but I've read some anecdotal advice about increased burst speeds or whatever and thought at worst I'll get the same performance at best I'll see some improvement. In the end I used a hot swap adapter from the silverstone case for one of the drives because the PSU sata power spacing didn't work with my 2 HDD and Optical placements, the hot swap adapter uses molex power instead and I was too lazy to go to the pc shop to pick up an adapter. I could've hooked up an extra sata power cable to the modular PSU but cable management is f'ing frustrating enough with the cables I have, or maybe I just suck at it.. either way it's all in the back of the case now and I don't want to go there again!

Anyway, so far regular SATA cable (from the hotswap adapter) seems to work, whether it makes a difference between that and the rated SATAIII I'll try to find out later, I've got a lot of setting up and adjusting to do for now. Of course if I ever get to benchmarking it I'll post what I find in case anyone is interested.

Cheers.
 
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