Sata 3 Cables

How do you know there is a difference in the quality of the cables? I was mainly disagreeing about the purity of the copper - pure copper is always used. The SATA 1&2 spec allow for a couple of guages. By insulation do you mean shielding?

Here you go. The section on cables in the standard org's FAQ:

9: Does SATA 6Gb/s require different connectors and cables to support the higher
transfer speed?
A9: The same cables and connectors used for current SATA 1.5 and SATA 3.0 Gb/s
implementations can be used to connect SATA 6Gb/s devices, although SATA-IO recommends
quality components be selected to ensure data integrity and robust operation at the faster SATA
6Gb/s transfer rate. Keeping the existing SATA connector form factor enables SATA 6Gb/s to
be designed into the same cost-conscious hardware architectures while minimizing
infrastructure changes.

http://www.sata-io.org/documents/SAT...-FAQ-FINAL.pdf

So I think as long as you have a good quality, shielded, SATA cable meant for a disk drive it should work fine. Some of the cables that come with CD/DVD reader/writers are not very good I expect.

HammerHead said:

I was referring to sata 2 and sata 3 which is what I thought the thread was about. Are we talking about USB or Sata. I stand by what I said about sata cables. The resistance of a conductor is critical to what is capable of doing. The carrier voltage probably remains the same between sata 2 and sata 3. The difference would be the frequency at which the digital sig in transmitted. To be successful the cable should be a higher quality. Hence increase in circular mils and quality of the copper. Since I don't have any way of measuring those specs, I am at the mercy of the manufacturer.

I don't know why you would think I wasn't talking about SATA II vs III or why your threw USB in there.

I know what you said but I am asking is this opinion or do you know that the manufacturers need to increase the purity of the conductor (I believe they are all 100% copper) or the wire gauge or is this just your opinion. I would like to know this information - it seems impossible to find.

I know they test insertion loss and it has to be 6db for a certain length up to 4800 MHz for 3Gb/s SATA. I expect that SATA 3.0 test is the same except for a frequency somewhere above 6000 MHz. They don't specify how the spec should be met - better shielding or wire gauge could be used, but it is not s3epcified. I also suspect, from the sata-io words I quoted, that most good quality cables made for SATA II probably meet this spec.

Also to p5bdkw. Though drives may not be able to use the available SATA bandwidth, the electrical signaling is still at 6Gb/s for a 6Gb/s device on a 6Gb/s controller. So the the cable still has to be able to meet the spec.

GeneO,

Looking at your wildlife photos, it is obvious that you have a thing with birds...I wonder if you ever saw photography of the ducks in the Tucson zoo, where one duck and her baby flock were feeding the fish in the lagoon that went through the zoo. I remember it being in the newspaper once, some years ago, but I saw them myself on a visit to the zoo, and was very amused, not only by the birds behavior, but the many fish sticking their heads out of the water with their mouths open.

I don't know that this video is of the same location or time, and I don't recall the fish being carps, but this will show what I'm talking about. This is a single duck, whereas what I saw was a group, and instead of casually feeding each fish one at a time, my ducks were scurrying back and forth hectically.

YouTube - ‪baby duck feed the carp (Nishiki-Goi, Koi)‬‏

Ah! You are right. Sometimes I just can't keep my drives straight in my mind.

EDIT: Still, this illustrates something that I have asked about previously, regarding whether a SATA III drive is better than SATA II or not. All the responses that I got seemed to brush it off as merely being hype, or too negligible to be worth noting. That may be true for someone accustomed to SSDs, but not for someone such as myself that is specifically interested in hard drives. The difference between your drive and mine is definitely worth paying a little more for. Had I seen this previously, I would not have opted for that SATA II drive.