SATA Woes.../me fumes

[RyanM]

Okay, this is driving me nuts.

Boards supporting Serial ATA have been out for 3 to 4 months. Adapters for IDE to SATA have been around just as long. And there's a few SATA drives on the market already, with a bunch on the way.

And no matter how hard I look, the only goddamned place that carries 1 meter SATA cables is Mwave? And they're $9 a pop? What the hell?

Did I step into some sort of reality distortion ray? SATA cables use less wires than IDE cables, require less raw materials, and they're 3 times the price? Christ, when ATA-66 came out 3 years ago, I could pick up a cable for $6, and that was when manufacturing yields were low, like they probably are for SATA cables now.

The hell?

 

[MisterMe]

Ummm....dude....it's nine dollars. You only have to buy it once. You just spent $125-175 on the board and probably more than that on the drive and your quivelling about $9 ?????

 

[Lizardman]

Regualar IDE cables only cost about a quarter to make yet they sell for $10 at staples and best buy. Why is this? Because people buy them for that price.

 

[RyanM]

Well, I'm less pissed about the price than I am about the lack of places that carry the long ones. I had to use 36 inch IDE cables to reach my hard drives, and the longest SATA cables most places carry are the .5 meter or 24 inch ones. So far, Mwave and Buy.com are the only places that have the 1 meter cables.

Anybody know any other places? I've been googling the last hour or so, but haven't turned up diddly. Still, i feel like I'm forgetting someplace obvious.

 

[astroview]

Economies of scale perhaps bud.

 

[DaveSimmons]

Part of the fun of being on the bleeding edge. Right now there's no good reason for 99.99999% of buyers to spend the extra for SATA, so sales of drives are going to be very weak and no one has much incentive to carry cables.

I've run into this myself when shopping for 250 GB IDE drives -- so few buyers need them that only hideously expensive vendors like CDW carry the Maxline series with a 3-year warranty. I couldn't stand to pay an extra $125+ so I settled for 1-year D'max 16 instead.

 

[TimeKeeper]

Well...you really can't find any 40" or 39.370" IDE cable for less than $9 neither, right?

 

[BoberFett]

Out of curiosity, what do you need a meter long SATA cable for?

 

[Hagen]

I just got a new mobo with SATA, it comes with a couple of 18 inch cables. Unfortunately, I don't have a SATA hard drive yet, I'm gonna wait awhile. However, I've got a Lian Li aluminum case, which is really large and I'm still going to have more than enough length with the 18in. cable, so unless I'm missing something you shouldn't have a problem. I'm not sure what the standard length is, but I think that's what mine must be. Also, you can only attach one hard drive to each cable, if you want a RAID configuration you have to have 2 SATA slots. It's all pretty new technology, so hope this helps a bit.

 

[vetteguy]

So you paid a premium to buy a motherboard that has SATA, paid a premium for a hard drive that is SATA, but you're mad because you have to pay a premium for SATA cables?

 

[RyanM]

Full tower case. The hard drives are at the top two 5 1/4 bays. SATA connectors on the mobo are located at the very bottom. Distance straight from the SATA to drive - 25 inches. And since I thread all my cables behind the motherboard tray and back to the drives, that adds an extra 5 inches of slack needed. So 36 to 40 inch cables are a necessity for my hard drives.

I'm not running SATA hard drives. I've got two of the Serielle converters; I'm transitioning to SATA now simply because it'll nicely clean up my case. I'm willing to take the minor performance hit.

And like I said, the price doesn't bug me half as much as the fact there aren't many places that carry them. I did end up just grabbing 'em from buy.com, since I've been meaning to renew my Maximum PC subscription too.

 

[StormRider]

I remember when SCSI cables were like $50 to $99. $9 doesn't seem much to me.

 

[ProviaFan]

What about the special SATA power connectors? I haven't seen any of those.

 

[RyanM]

Well, the Seriellel adapters came with the power adapter thingies. So once the cables get here Monday, I'll be golden.