SATA Question

[JSW]

I realize this isn’t really a true Vista question, but I’ve received very helpful information in this forum so I’m asking anyway.

My new PC (with Vista Home Premium 32-bit) has SATA connectors on the motherboard. Two were already in use (hard drive and DVD drive) and two were open. I added a second hard drive, and plugged the cable into the SATA connector beside the primary drive.

When I put a second hard drive in a PC with IDE/ATA connectors, I always keep them on separate cables/connectors for maximum transfer speed between the two hard drives. My question is does it make any difference with SATA which connector you use?

Thanks for your help!

 

[SCSIraidGURU]

SATA does not matter. You won't flood the SATA bus. You would need 15+ hard drives to do this. Make sure the device manager has the proper settings for your SATA drives. If you are on a UPS, you can enable write caching in the device manager.

 

[johngalt]

Furthermore, think about what you said, JSW:

When I put a second hard drive in a PC with IDE/ATA connectors, I always keep them on separate cables/connectors for maximum transfer speed between the two hard drives. My question is does it make any difference with SATA which connector you use?

When you plugged in your new SATA drive, wasn't it automatically on a separate cable and connector? :P

Not trying to make you mad, but you basically answered your own question. And, AFAIK, there are no dual drive SATA cables....

Unless you're making use of Serial ATA Port Multipliers

 

[JSW]

Hi johngalt,

Yes, each drive has it's own cable. The main reason I asked was because on my motherboard the Sata connectors are arranged two across and two down. The two open connectors are different colors (white and blue I think). I'm guessing they have bins of parts so each board could have a variety of colored connectors. This is my first PC with SATA connectors, so I just wanted to double check with someone.

Thanks!

 

[Dwarf]

Hi JSW,

Check your motherboard manual. What colour sockets are your existing hard drive and optical drive plugged into? It could be nothing more simple than they just used different coloured connectors when the board was assembled, or they could indicate which sockets support optical devices. All SATA sockets should support hard drives, but not all will support optical devices, particularly if you want to boot from them.
Dwarf