Old sata cables slower?

[daniielrp]

Just a quick one - I've found a nice blue sata cable that colour matches perfectly with my case, but it's from a 2006 era dell business desktop. 

 

Is a 10 year old cable likely to be slower at data transfer than a new one? I know sata has moved on but were the cables themselves slower back then?

 

Thanks

[Pcinacan]

If it is sata 2 it should be just fine 

[cayphed]

The best thing about SATA is the cables have always been the same, right the way from SATA I, to SATA III.

[Sakkura]

The cables are exactly the same, as long as they're not broken or terrible quality they'll work perfectly.

[Lehti]

2 minutes ago, Pcinacan said:

If it is sata 2 it should be just fine 

SATA 2 wasn't around in 2006, but yeah, it'll work just fine with your new hard drive. The only thing that could give you trouble is the possible lack of clips. IIRC, they were a bit uncommon in 2006. By the way, Amazon sells a nice 5-pack of blue SATA cables for around 10 bucks. I suggest you give that option a try.

[daniielrp]

Thanks guys  

[daniielrp]

In terms of number of pins it's fine, and it is actually really good quality from the looks of it, even has a little pull tab to help remove it too! 

[DevilishBooster]

Puget Systems actually did a nice little article about this exact topic a couple of years ago. You can find it here.

Bottom line is, so long as you are not using really poor quality SATA cables, you can use old SATA cables with brand new drives and any difference in performance falls within margin of error.

[cayphed]

I actually can't find the page, but it had the life expectancies of a bunch of cable types, and I do remember that SATA cables are good for 6 plug in and unplugs before problems start to arise.

So I do recommend a new cable, it'll probably help with the system aesthetics to.

[daniielrp]

20 hours ago, cayphed said:

I actually can't find the page, but it had the life expectancies of a bunch of cable types, and I do remember that SATA cables are good for 6 plug in and unplugs before problems start to arise.

So I do recommend a new cable, it'll probably help with the system aesthetics to.

All mine are long past 6 cycles haha!

[cayphed]

11 minutes ago, daniielrp said:

All mine are long past 6 cycles haha!

I should hope so, it was probably a bs page anyhow.