SATA and SATA II

[stephent3]

I have just bought 2 new SATA II Hard Drives. My motherboard (Asus A8N-E) came with two SATA cables; the motherboard is SATA II compatible but it only says SATA on the cables not SATA II. Are these SATA II cables or do I have to buy new SATA II cables?

Kind Regards

Stephen

[BUFF]

just use what you've got.
In reality there is next to no difference between SATA & SATA II drives (the much touted speed difference in reality is for the limit of the interface & the drives aren't able to get close to even 150 for continuous transfer due to the mechanics)

[stephent3]

That sounds like a sensible answers. Thanks I'll do that and save myself some money.

[kellyharding]

I think the only really major differences between I and II are:

Extra bandwidth - you're not likly to notice really.
Hot-swapability - not likely to notice either unless you get special cages iirc.
NCQ - you will notice this probably.

Using a SATA I cable shouldn't make much differenceI'd of thought.

Hard drives are the bottleneck, it is only really when you've *lots* on a bus when the bandwidth is needed. Think 10 drives on a SCSI bus, that needs the bandwidth, one or two drives in a desktop machine doesn't.

Kelly

[cougarslam]

for some reason my WD2500KS hard disks running on a sata 1 mobo show up as removable disks. wonder if they are hot swappable

still i never liked the idea of opening a live pc and messing around in it since i electrocuted myself on 1 doing that in college a few years ago.

[SuicidaL]

for some reason my WD2500KS hard disks running on a sata 1 mobo show up as removable disks. wonder if they are hot swappable

still i never liked the idea of opening a live pc and messing around in it since i electrocuted myself on 1 doing that in college a few years ago.

my samsung spinpoint shows up as removeable to, and i think it is due to the hot swap feature.

[Indi75]

A lot of the newer SATA drives, particularly SATAII are hotswappable.

I've also noticed that there are a lot of cables available for both.

My intended motherboard, the Asus P5W HD Deluxe works with both SATA150 and 300.

Do all motherboards do this? ...and the cables dont matter?

[SilentDeath]

Hot-swapability - not likely to notice either unless you get special cages iirc.

This is a controller-side feature, not hdd. Some of the very first controllers support hot swapping (sillicon image 3112/3114 for example, which were on most nforce2 motherboards). Not sure if its part of the sata standard though.

[Steve B]

my samsung spinpoint shows up as removeable to, and i think it is due to the hot swap feature.

Its the nvidia raid chip that shows this as a removeable disk. Try to safely remove hardware and it doesn't let you. Spinpoints 120s aren't hot-swapable i dont think... could be wrong though

[Agent]

Its the nvidia raid chip that shows this as a removeable disk. Try to safely remove hardware and it doesn't let you. Spinpoints 120s aren't hot-swapable i dont think... could be wrong though

Thats probably because your trying to eject the windows drive ?
All SATA drives are hot-swapable

[kalniel]

NCQ - you will notice this probably.

Yup - SATA1 without NCQ is faster

All SATA drives are hot-swapable

The drives are, yes, but not all chipsets support it. The ULI M1965 supports SATA but not hotswapping, and the JMicron SATA2 chip on the ASRock Dual Sata board supports SATA2 but NOT hot-swapping

[Black Cat]

I would contact E-Buyer or Zebra Computers Ltd in Birmingham for cheap SATA drives, cables or information.

[Agent]

The drives are, yes, but not all chipsets support it.

Yep, but as he has the option, the chipset must support it.
You wont ge the Icon for ULi chipsets. I have one right next to me (whhyyyy ohhh whyyyy )

[gOdman]

the only way to perhaps tell sata 2 (300mbs) and sata 1 (150mbs) apart is by thenuse of synthetetic benchies, even then only when burst speed is approprate, sata 2 will help in the future...

the reason why one cannot tell the two apart is due to the drives' transfer rate, the drives simply cannot transfer fast enough to saturate the bus, therefore no difference is clearly visible.
This is one instance (like pciex16) where high bandwidth buses make little difference in the real world, we could, for example, still carry on using AGP until maybe next year even with todays graphics cards, the devices simply cannot saturate the bus.

[Funkstar]

Just thought i would add this to the discussion: SATA II technically doesn't really exist.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SATA_2#SATA_3.0_Gb.2Fs
and
http://www.sata-io.org/namingguidelines.asp

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”

not that i'm being pedantic or anything

[Zak33]

SATA 1 vs SATA 2?

SATA 1 fast drive (Raptor) kicks SATA 2 drive in the teeth for every performance ever (say my Barracuda for example)

SATA 2 = 95% marketing hype 5 % Native Command Queing benefit(possibly)

Dont fret, SATA 1 is good.