Whats the deal with SATA power connectors?

[theaxemaster]

The reason for the 15-pin connector is so that different voltages are supplied to the appropriate places. In addition to the customary 5v and 12v wires, new 3.3v wires are included for the new devices. 9 of the pins provided are for the positive, negative and ground contacts for each voltage. The remaining 6 connectors are for the hot-swappable feature of SATA, designating an additional two contacts per voltage for this.

I understand the need for the ground wires. I came across a bad HD which shorted one of the rails to ground when connected. It came from a PC with a blacked PSU. Luckliy my PSU simply shutoff imediately after I pressed power or that drive would have killed again!

I still don't get how two pins are better than one from an arching standpoint? The current is only distributed when both are connected, surely one of the pins must make/break contact before the other?

I found multiple refrences to the two pins per voltage being related to hot swaping, so I belive it, I just don't understand it.

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I also don't see whay hotswapping means falls off at the slightest nudge.

USB cables don't fall off when nudged. Seems like they could have just make the socket a bit deeper.

I am conviced that the engineers who came up with the connector should have drank less beer and more caffine when they designed the SATA poser cable.


You're distributing the current across 3 pins instead of one. So if the draw is 6 amps at 12v, instead of pulling one 6 amp connection apart, you pull 3 2 amp connections apart. Less current per connection means less chance of an arc. Where you're misunderstanding is that the wires are not connected upstream. It isn't simply a split of one wire into 3, connected, then back into one, it is 3 seperate electrical connections between power source and HD. So the most any would draw in my example is 2 amps.

True, if it was a split, then the first pin to pull off would shift the draw to the other two, not really changing anything. But with 3 physically seperate wires all the way, this doesn't happen.

 

[Houndsteeth]

Molex doesn't work so well for backpane connections. If you have ever seen a SATA backpane, you will understand completely why the SATA spec requires the power connectors this way. It also ties into the SAS spec, since SATA and SAS are going to be cross compatible.

For those who don't know what a backpane is, in a server environment, a backpane is a PCB that has the data and power connectors set up for multiple drives, to ease the removal and insertion of those drives.

I would not be surprised to start seeing backpanes become more available for desktop cases (and not just servers) as SATA becomes a more widely adopted standard.

 

[K_T]

I used to have problems with my old rig. The sata data cables would disconnect themselves from time to time. This is with the case closed & no human interferance. It was a major pain in the ass, but I never lost any data.

My new Gigabyte DS3 came with 4x Yellow Sata Data cables, with little locking clips on the ends. They are fantastic, secure & reliable. I wish I knew where I could buy more, I hate the cheapo red sata cables.

Apart from that, I've loving Sata.

 

[Spectatohead]

I got 4 nice red SATA cables with little locking clips with my ABIT AT8 32X. They lock in with a nice solid click on both the drive end and the mother board end. I just have to remember that they are there. I have tried to pull them off a couple times without releasing the clip. I got too used to the loose cables.

 

[gm0n3y]

Does anybody know if you can get SATA cable with 90/180 degree ends AND locking clips? Preferably somewhere in Canada. Anybody know of a store with a good selection of cables in Canada? The stores I regularily check out don't seem to have a very good selection at all (at least for cables).