Do Sata Cables Matter?

[CDDogg]

I bought a new motherboard recently that I failed to install because I need a new case, but I did notice that my new board has 3 times as much sata ports as my old motherboard does. I know the sata connections are important because thats how my HDD and my Disc drive will connect to the motherboard. But is there specific ports for specific cables? what happens if I plug my HDD into the wrong port? does it even make a difference?

 

[smorizio]

with the sata ports there numbered 0-6. you want your boot drive on 0 and the next device one port 1. some mb have intel and asmedia sata ports always with boot devices use intel ports. with sata ports you dont need to fill every port with a cable. only need cable on the port your using.

 

[mcnumpty23]

no the ports arent specific for each sata cable

but always plug your hard drive into the intel sata ports if on an intel board that has more than one sata chip

 

[Ra_V_en]

I bought a new motherboard recently that I failed to install because I need a new case, but I did notice that my new board has 3 times as much sata ports as my old motherboard does. I know the sata connections are important because thats how my HDD and my Disc drive will connect to the motherboard. But is there specific ports for specific cables? what happens if I plug my HDD into the wrong port? does it even make a difference?

It doesn't matter that much. You just plug sata cable to the mobo and the device and plug power cable to the device and you are set. The only difference might be the slot speed, since there can be difference versions of SATA ports on the mobo SATA I, II, III. So in that in mind you would like the device to be set to the fastest port it can handle.
More about versions here: http://kb.sandisk.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/8142/~/difference-between-sata-i,-sata-ii-and-sata-iii
The other difference, might be the device order for booting, but this can be handled easily in the BIOS.

Btw that answers above are partially correct...
Port0 booting device is irrelevant for decades now, you can set boot priority in bios for a quite some time now.
There was times when secondary on board sata chips were superior to intel chipsets providing newer SATA standard support. So performance wise it was actually the opposite. I can't find exact example now but i remember such when was choosing LGA 775 mobo few years back.

 

[norseman4]

As ra_V_en stated, there is no real issue with what port you plug a drive into for a simple setup. If you are going to RAID your drives off the MB (if it supports it), and not just in the OS, then position becomes more important. (The manual would show which ports can be included in the RAID.

I'm not using RAID in my current build, my boot drive is an M.2, but I have one data drive and 2 optical drives. I have 6 available SATA ports, 0-5 that are available. Port 0 will be the data drive, that will be mounted at the top of my drive cage, the 2 optical drives will be connected to ports 2 and 3, with 2 being the top drive and 3 being the other. If a drive or cable needs to be replaced, I don't have to guess as to which cable goes to which drive.

Just food for thought.