Pictured are two visually identical SATA Power cables, meant to connect to a PSU (the other end of each cable, not pictured, connects to a SATA drive). They're only distinguishable by the metal inside each pin (hard to see in person, easy to see in the photo attached).
Which one of these two is considered standard? From a hardware design perspective, why was a 2nd standard introduced?
(In case you're curious, yes, I destroyed an SSD by not noticing this).
1 Answer
This is not a standardized plug at all: The other end might carry a standard SATA Power connector, but this end looks like it is intended to plug into a "modular" power supply - those connections are not standardized and highly vendor (and even model-) specific.
Not being standardized means, you have to buy new cables from the original vendor if you want to extend your setup.
EDIT
The previous paragraph was originally prefixed with "Honi qui mal y pense" - this can be translated as "Ashamed should be, whoever thinks bad of this" and is used in Europe (where I am from) to say "They did that on purpose". I apologize if SO users from the US were led to misread this as to be ashamed for being in that situation
0
