Serial ATA - A ½ Baked Idea implemented Clumbsily & Cheaply. SCSI SCA U320 = A+

[Jonnie Goodboy]

Speaking from experience. New to both SATA and SCA-2 Ultra-320 SCSI.

The connectors on SATA, the cheap horrible little SATA plugs for your Hard-Drive show no outward concept of design quality or fabrication standardisation or indeed STRENGTH.  There is a total lack of standardisation in comparison even with the old reliable but morbidly slow ATA (IDE) interface and it's 40 or 80-way parallel cable.



Well, some of the right-handed (knee-bended) SATA connectors are just loose fitting and the straight ones may not allow the side-panel to close on your PC. If you force it, just a tiny bit, as I did, to accomodate it in the tight space, you'll easily fracture the super-weak SATA plastic retaiing stub on the Hard-Drive Proper. Then you'll be faced with having to retrieve it with tweezers from the SATA cable's lug and super-glue it back onto the HDD, now a weaker component and you'll have to use bandages or thick one-sided sticky tape to give strength to the whole damned thing.

Compare SATA PIA I/O calbes with SCSI SCA-2 'Hot-Swap' or even the 68-pin ribbon cable connectors, the latter which more resemble IDE in the design priniciple and you'll find reliability, design quality and most of all, - STRENGTH suitable for these to be used in multi-trerrabyte Servers with large numbers of RAID devices all vibrating away madly, producing loads of noise & heat. They won't break.



Put those weary little right-angle bend SATA I-III plugs, and I predict you'll have a whole load of HDD's mysteriously going off-line for no evident reason other than the SATA cable and Plug design is Crap.

The Cable too, I mention, because it's rigid, which a ribbon cable never has been in the past therefore manipulating it around your PC is going to put even more strain ont the previously mentioned SATA plugs, causing them to break even more prematurely.

1) SATA Hardware Interface design = 'Null Point', for being rubbish and as weak as crazy-putty.
2) SCSI SCA-2 'Hot-Swap' and Caddies, 100 Points for being thoroughly dependable, and heavy duty.

[Jonnie Goodboy]

Moreover, SATA HDD connectors are bespoke design, which until SATA Domesticated and Timid Drives arrived on the scene a couple/three/five years ago, did not exist at all in any similar form.
Even SIL or DIL PCB plugs may be more reliable ¿ ...


SILLY! Fragile Plug on both ends of Rigid or very stiff SATA 'Ribbon' cable. Ribbon Cable is a standard in of itself dating back decades, and Ribbons because of their peculiarly long length have always been flexible and easily bent on themselves or around corners. I have a 24-way ribbon that must be 25-metres long, and very flexible. SATA 'ribbons' have none of this. They are again: Bespoke. But crap with it too.

... and they do not continue from the industry and standards driven spec of either IDE:

Which are a Derivative of Dual-Inline PCB plugs, long established in digital electronics interconnections going right back into the early 1980's or even earlier....

Nor the old Centronics SCSI -1

Which used the even longer established 25-way 'D' connector univerally applicable in printer to PC connections, ubiquitous across the entire industry at home and in the office; in recent years superceeded by USB or WiFi interface..

Nor SCSI SCA-2 'Hot Swap' stds

These are rugged and designed for realistic 'hot-swapping' in sweaty, noisy and busy Server workhouses!

I think SATA was designed to fail, to have a very high-risk "inbuilt obsolescence" factor. That harps back to the days of the 1970's when inbuilt obsolescence was a major factor in many electrical type goods in UK markets.

[Jonnie Goodboy]

It's called HARDware for a reason. To make something entirely out of decomposible, fragile and inherently cheap weak CHINESE plastic, is a complete self-defeating contradiction.

[Jonnie Goodboy]

I've had to buy three different SATA cables ... endeavouring to find one which ACTUALLY WORKS & FITS.

1 Didn't fit the case and broke the HDD side SATA socket.
2 Had metal locking tabs. Right-Angled on each end of 'Ribbon' Cable. Fitted the HDD but wouldn't stay in the MoBo socket.
3 Has One Right-Angle and one Straight Plug, plus metal locking tabs.... Fingers crossed.

I NEVER had any trouble with any of the previously mentioned IDE, ATA or SCSI standards, because, they were actually designed around STANDARDS.

Unbelievable Junk. Designed by Monkeys on Ribbon typewriters ...