I just bought a new Sata II drive. Do I have to get a Sata II cable or can I use a Sata I cable without any speed loss?

You can use the SATA I cable without problems.
The fastest drives on the market can't even come close to SATA I maximum speed, let alone SATA II

click me !

Theoretical limits aside; what is the actual/physical difference between the cables? As far as I can figure, Sata II is shielded (also called eSATA?) where as SATA I is unshielded but can be used for both I and II inside the computer (without speed loss).

Is this just a marketing ploy or am I missing something important?

There's absolutely ZERO difference between SATAI and SATAII cables. They're identical.

eSATA(external SATA) still uses the normal SATA cable for data I believe.

e.SATA is the stuff from Highpoint which uses Firewire400 cable to transfer SATA.

eSATA is basically a sataII rated cable with an I type connector instead of sata1/sata2's L shape. Here's some pics of the differences, notice the sata to esata, allowing sata1 or 2 to go esata:

http://www.satacables.com/html/sat [...] ables.html

Is it possible that you don't need a special eSATA controler; You can just buy an 'I' type to 'L' type cable?

Michaelahess, I did notice on that page, the SATA to SATA cables had a serial 1.5 GB/s symbol by them. Maybe it's just an outdated page.

But that would defeat the purpose of being external hence such cable does not exist.

What does exist tho is female SATA ports for I-plug mounted on a PCI plate, this is then wired to male L-plugs SATA to be plugged onto the SATA controller.

Acronym overload !

Isn't there a difference in the latching mechanism? I was under the impression that SATA2.5 connectors had a proper latching mechanism where the original was only a friction fit.

I could be wrong.....

The only difference will be in access speeds to the onboard cache of the drive.
Basically if you have an 8Mb cache and the block that the PC wants to read is in the cache already then it will go faster with SATA2. In practice this wont be noticable because the cache is relatively small and SATA1 is already quite fast enough to transfer 8Mb or 16Mb in the blink of an eye.
Still, SATA2 drives are probably newer and could have faster components.

As an example, I have 2 drives: an older WD80gig and a new WD160 of the same series. The 80gb is about 40% slower in everything just because it's older (I think), but it was the top of the range about 2-3 years ago.

Gabor

The latching mechanism is just a fancy plug for more sercure attachment since the first generation SATA plug were prone to falling off when under stress/tension(bending).

The L shape&size is still the same.

Yeah, but if some suppliers are touting these as "SATAII" then they're worth getting for the latch alone. I don't know what the designers were thinking with the original, maybe the bean-counters insisted on the 2cent savong......

yeah but some kind of lock is fine because that friction locking mechanism doesn't let me secure.

The non-latch SATA cable only costs $1 a piece anyway. (30cm-ish ones)
Works fine for me.

Ok, I buy that the difference between SATA I and SATA II is just a little tab that makes it stay connected better. ExtremeTech has a review that outlines some of SATA II's new features (specifically noting the "improved cables" ). They even mention that eSATA typically run at 1.5Gbps which is why Michaelahess' link probably listed the 'I' type to 'L' type cable as such. And as wusy said, you can get a SATA to eSATA converter cable to plug in external SATA devices.

Neat! Now where can you buy SATA cables for $1 apiece?