Is SATA II cable electrically different?

[WDS]

The SATA II cables that I've seen have secure connectors, but is that the
only difference? Or is there an electrical standard for SATA II cables that
make them different? In other words, is there a danger using SATA I cables
with SATA II drives and controllers?

 

[Timothy Daniels]

The SATA II cables that I've seen have secure connectors, but is that the
only difference? Or is there an electrical standard for SATA II cables that
make them different? In other words, is there a danger using SATA I cables
with SATA II drives and controllers?

SATA II cables are only different electrically by having better
shielding and grounding for that shielding. Here is some very
interesting reading: http://www.sata-io.org/whitepapers.asp
Silicon Image's white paper on external SATA cables is especially
interesting.

*TimDaniels*

 

[Paul]

The SATA II cables that I've seen have secure connectors, but is that the
only difference? Or is there an electrical standard for SATA II cables that
make them different? In other words, is there a danger using SATA I cables
with SATA II drives and controllers?

You can thank the friendly standards org for making this so hard
to find:

http://web.archive.org/web/20050330...ialata.org/docs/PHYii Spec Rev 1_0 052604.pdf

"Gen1i: Generation 1 Electrical Specifications: These are the 1.5 Gb/s
electrical specifications previously released in Serial ATA 1.0a for
PC motherboard to device applications. These specifications are copied
here for completeness." PDF page 12

"Gen2i: Generation 2 Electrical Specifications: These are newly
developed 3.0 Gb/s electrical specifications, described here, aimed
at PC motherboard to device applications." PDF page 12

"The electrical requirements for the standard internal Serial ATA
cable and connector (for Gen1i/2i applications) are listed in
Table 13." PDF page 176

In other words, the same electrical specifications apply to the cable,
for both SATA 1.5Gbs and SATA 3.0Gbs for the internal cable. A cable
that meets Table 13, can be used for 1.5Gb/s or 3.0Gb/s drives.

There is a different spec for an external ("ESATA") cable, as the
cable is designed to reduce emissions, and can be longer. That
is the contents of Table 14.

Table 15 applies to multilane cable. There are now some cables,
where four SATA cables worth of signals, are combined into one
connector. I think I have seen such a thing used for external
SATA, from a PCI card to four drives. The connector was referred
to as "Infiniband", I think, but for most desktop users, is not
something they are likely to run into.

Here is a picture of a "4 lane cable", for connecting a four
drive enclosure, to a PCI faceplate mounted connector. So
think of this as "quad ESATA"...

http://www.highpoint-tech.com/image/products/storage_accessories/X4_big.gif

Paul

 

[Timothy Daniels]

There are now some cables,
where four SATA cables worth of signals, are combined into one
connector. I think I have seen such a thing used for external
SATA, from a PCI card to four drives. The connector was referred
to as "Infiniband", I think, but for most desktop users, is not
something they are likely to run into.

Here is a picture of a "4 lane cable", for connecting a four
drive enclosure, to a PCI faceplate mounted connector. So
think of this as "quad ESATA"...

http://www.highpoint-tech.com/image/products/storage_accessories/X4_big.gif

Paul

Check out the photo of HighPoint's quad external HD enclosure
and the "quad SATA cable". More info:
http://highpoint-tech.com/USA/storage+accessories.htm#
http://highpoint-tech.com/USA/x4.htm

Does this give you any ideas?


*TimDaniels*

 

[Timothy Daniels]

Does this give you any ideas?

Ooops, wrong NG.

*TimDaniels*