Is my SATAII hard drive running at SATAII speed?

[christiani]

I've recently finished building a pc. I ordered an Abit AB9 pro motherboard, a SATAII hard drive and a SATAII cable among other things. When I started to build it I noticed that the motherboard only had sockets for plugs shown in the picture below:



The SATAII cable that I bought is like the cable shown underneath:



The cables supplied with the motherboard fit the sockets on the motherboard, but the cable I bought (shown in the second picture) is the wrong type, and isn't in an 'L' shape.
There is one socket on the motherboard for the type of cable shown in the second picture, but it's on the outside of the case, where the LAN sockets etc are.
Do the 'L' shaped cables act as SATAII sockets as well as SATA sockets, or will I have to connect my hard drive to the socket on the outside of the case?

[sTrAnGeFrUiT!]

i cant say i really no what the second cable is

but im pretty sure sata II
is backwards compatible and both use the same cables

i have a Sata II drive conected to my Sata I
mobo fine

[Funkstar]

don't worry, nothing runs at "SATAII" speeds thats just marketing and indicated a potential maximum bandwidth of 3GB/sec

there is a lot of confusion over the SATA specs. Here are a couple of links that should clear it up a little:
http://www.sata-io.org/namingguidelines.asp
and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SATA_2

Basically the organisation that oversees the SATA specification used to be called "SATA II" but they renamed themselfs "SATA-IO". Various parts of the increased specification they have been working on has become known as SATA II but should really just be called “SATA 3.0 Gb/s”

as discussed in this thread:
http://forums.hexus.net/showthread.php?t=87812

What you have is e-SATA cables, as in external-SATA, thats why it has the metal clips on it, to save the cables being knocked out easily. I believe those are another part of the SATA-II spec.

[christiani]

So, they're different cables but can both run at SATA II or 3GB/sec? Confusing! lol

[Funkstar]

yes, different cables for different scenarios.

In theory either cable will run at 3GB/sec, but then you are *never* going to get that kind of speed from and current hard drive.

According to the Wester Digital spec sheet, a Raptor will get 1.5GB/Sec from the 16MB buffer to the host controller, data from the drive itself is rated at about 84MB sustained. Peak might be a little more.

[BUFF]

There is one socket on the motherboard for the type of cable shown in the second picture, but it's on the outside of the case, where the LAN sockets etc are.

eSATA?

[christiani]

A port for the cable shown in the second picture

[BUFF]

which I reckon is an eSATA rather than SATA

[christiani]

Sorry, was having a blonde moment. esata faster than sata or sata II?

[BUFF]

same thing, just a different connector (e for external)

[directhex]

eSATA?

winnar!

the lower image is an eSATA cable, for use outside a peecee