Standard, wafer-style SATA connectors come in male and female formats and are available in three varieties: data only, power only and data plus power. If you don’t have any SATA ports on your motherboard, your motherboard does not support the SATA interface.

When you're building or upgrading computer systems, flexible options for drive cabling can help you overcome many problems. With SATA III, larger amounts of data can be transmitted than with its predecessors SATA II and SATA I. In conclusion, SATA data cables are an integral part of modern computing and data storage, and investing in high-quality cables can help ensure your system operates at peak performance and efficiency. This way, only the SATA cable connector attached to the HDD itself will need to be removed and replaced once the new HDD has been successfully installed. That power usually comes in the form of a 4-pin Molex power connector with a SATA drive specific connector.To ensure a solid connection and to avoid accidental disconnections, SATA cables will typical feature latching connectors. Larger SATA cables are available but these are rarely used because the extra cable length is just not necessary in standard assemblies.

If pushed beyond the limits, the PSU may suffer an unexpected shutdown, so try to keep its power load under 80%-90%. This cable is compatible with all devices with SATA connectors, such as internal hard drives, SSDs, HDDs, DVD drives, burners and many other devices with Serial ATA connectors.While the latest SATA iteration isn't in use for consumer drives, the technology does eventually filter into those products. The SATA technology itself is a connecter interface primarily used for computer bus connections in storage applications.

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Follow this guide to connect your SATA drives directly to the internal slots on the motherboard of the computer.