SATA cables

[EXreaction]

It is more for allowing future drives to come in and not hit any performance limits.

Nobody would build a drive that could go 10Gbps if the fastest interface was only 3Gbps (thats a bit of an exaggeration, but the interface needs to support higher speeds before the peripheral will).

Plus, at least with eSATA, you can connect multiple drives.

Also, the Raptors are not really that much faster. A 7200 RPM 500GB perpendicular recording drive with 16MB of cache is about as fast as a 10k RPM 74GB Raptor is, mostly because of density (the 10k RPM is faster with smaller files though and random read/write speed).

[Atomic Rooster]

If you see cables labeled as "SATA 2" the only difference is the locking mechanism on the plug. Otherwise, it's the very same cable as a standard SATA cable.

[Chuckiechan]

Quote:

then why do they sell these things if you cant even get these high rated speeds, ... what gives? this is like a total shock for me ...

Think of it like selling fishing lures to fishermen. "Oh, I'll buy the green spinner with the rattler thingie that glows in the dark. Maybe that will help!"

[pullmyfoot]

they sell those things because of future proofing. it also costs nothing more for them to produce it. heck the shop i buy most of my stuff from gives the darn wires to me for free.

plus, also, data gets corrupted over long IDE cables because of little defections in the wires. because all the data is sent over a large number of wires, they all have to arrive at the same time. the little defections, one wire being a micrometre shorter than another means that the data sometimes dont get there at the same time. its fine for a short wire, but when you have a longer wire then the problems are magnified

[zepper]

As Atomic Rooster said, you do get the metal clips on the plugs to help hold them in place, and I think the shielding may be a bit better as the wire bundles going thru the cable seem to be a bit fatter in the "SATA 2" rated cables. I have noticed in experimenting with the new cables from Silverstone that dressing a SATA cable along the metal of the case will slow things down a bit using synthetic benchmarks, but you probably wouldn't notice the diff. in normal usage.

It probably wouldn't hurt to make it a practice not to dress high speed cables against the case metal. I've known this 'rule of thumb' for a good while, but this is the first time I've verified it myself.

.bh.