SATA hd - useless little leads

Has anyone else had problems with SATA leads causing their HDs to crash?

I've got a new SATA drive in my PC and as I put it in I noticed that the lead fit was pretty rubbish, but there was no other option. However now the stupid computer keeps crashing - sometimes just turning off, sometimes locking solid, but today a nice XP blue-screen with some kernal error. After crashing it often won't reboot for a while. After the blue-screen it took 3 attempts to get it to find the SATA drive to reboot, and only a (gentle) thump on the case finally persuaded it to reboot.

Any ideas? Never had these probs. with the nice solid IDE leads....in fact, quite often you couldn't get them out when you wanted to.

If other's have had similar problems I might put a blob of glue on the connectors to keep them plugged in tight.

I hate the stupid little leads too, feels like they can move to an angle where they aren't making proper contact. I noticed one of mine had a crack in it (on the plastic connector) and I was getting problems so I bought some new ones. They still fit rubbish but it's OK now.

I haven't had any problems with them shaking loose. My biggest problem with SATA leads are that they snap off much too easilly, and unless you have an angled connecter, you won't be able to fit a SATA HD in quite a few case models.

I appreciate the reduced cable clutter though.

Except my sata cables seem to be about 10m long! The sata connector that was broke in my new machine was actually pressed right up against the video card in an unhealthy manner, so I moved the hardrive to another bay!

There's a new sata connector out there... a lot of motherboards accept it too... It kinda snaps into place.

I had a sata drive, it was crappy and slow and yeah, I had problems with the leads and overclocking. Sent it back and got a good ol PATA with a rounded cable, it was faster and I could overclock better too!

So far i'd agree PATA are still better. SATA2 may help them take off better.

Seriously, the @#!*s have caused me tons of bother.

Ive got a pile of new SATA cables in a box that came with my new motherboards-You can avem if you wantem.

Well I've pulled the stupid little SATA power cable out and used one of the good old big white plastic power plugs, and touch wood it's working OK now...any more clunks and crashes and it's going in the bin and I'll get a nice old reliable IDE drive.

What is PATA? I can guess that it stands for parallel ATA, but is that different to a normal IDE drive? Does it plug into the normal IDE slots ?

Oh Vorderman, you were talking about the power plug not the data plug. Well imho both types of plugs are crap. I did have problems with a sata power connector where the drive kept switching itself off in the middle of windows! So I used a 4 pin white Molex like you.
P = Parallel whereas S = Serial.

Yeah, the 'old' IDE drives are parallel (PATA).

I remember when everything parallel was considered better than serial, and everything analog was considered better than digital. Now it's the other way around. I'm confused. :P

RE: SATA + crashes:

I have experienced major problems too. See my thread here

Any installation, done badly, will cause problems. You have to be a little more careful with SATA cabling, live with it.

My little 300GB drive is working as perfectly now as when I shoved it into my case a few months back when I upgraded pretty much the whole PC. Never had SATA before (makes a nice change IMHO).

My SATA works fine now and I think they are better drives than IDE due to them being "next Gen" with bigger caches etc it's just that the cables are poo and they have introduced basic connectivity problems with more than one person. Whoever designed them needs their head examined, sure they are small and handy but they are as loose as a p*ick in a shirtsleeve as the old guy who taught me to build 486s used to say some 11 years ago.

Theyre not better, makers seem to be using them as an excuse for using shoddy parts. All the recent HD failures ive heard of have been SATA.

How's that then? I put the cable in, 2 weeks later it drops out. How do you suggest I am more careful? Shall I encase the PC in bubblewrap and never use it?

The leads are crap. I've had no more crashes since switching back to the molex power plug (touch wood). Never had an IDE ribbon cable fall out either...

All they need is a small plastic clip to hold them in, such as you get on floppy drive power cables. Really simple (just a lump on the plastic plug) and works perfectly.

Whats the difference anyway? I take it they transfer data faster?

sata is faster indeed.

Sata is theoretically faster and is only just starting to show true speed gains, however id rather have my data stable and 5% slower.

I can't say I've noticed the new HD being any faster than the old one, although I did have Win2000 on the old one and WinXP on the new one, so it's difficult to compare. Doesn't seem to run applications or games any faster though.



Me too. If it does any more crashing it'll be on the receiving end of my lumphammer.

If your power cables are falling out, then they are not good cables.

I have had bad IDE cables. infact I've got a 'server' machine with 6 HD's plugged in. They all have rounded ATA cables in and they do not provide a very stable connection. Many times I boot the machine and 1 HD isn't recognised and I have to press the cable in.

It's because there are 6 HD's in a full-tower case and the cables really are spaghetti-fied. SATA sabling would avoid the issue entirely. unfortunately, I'm not spending £££ on upgrading. The PC was built specifically to house my ageing HD's so that they can store temporary data (usenet downloads and RAR unpacks). Such is the transient nature of data :)

The only issue I have with SATA power cabling is the fact that there are more pins used for power than there are for data, which smacks of poor design.

only with SATA-II do we get true hot-plug, so I don't get the SATA-I power connector spec at all. Madness.

I've never had a sata cable just spontaneously shoot off the drive or the mother board. If it did I'd have to think seriously about calling in an exorcist.