A technician is tasked with installing a new high-speed 6 Gb/s hard drive into a desktop computer. The motherboard in question supports the highest data transfer rate available with the current generation of this interface. Which cable should the technician use to connect the hard drive to the motherboard to ensure full utilization of its transfer capabilities?
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A cable that supports the maximum speed of 6 Gb/s to match the high-speed interface of the motherboard and hard drive.
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A universal cable that works with all generations of the interface, since they are physically identical.
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A cable that supports a speed of 3 Gb/s, assuming backward compatibility will provide the necessary throughput.
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Any available cable, as the auto-negotiation feature will adjust the speed to the highest possible rate.
The correct answer is the cable that supports a transfer rate of 6 Gb/s, which corresponds to the third generation of Serial Advanced Technology Attachment (SATA). It is imperative to match the cable to the maximum supported speed of both the drive and the motherboard to prevent bottlenecking the performance. Using cables from previous generations (1.5 Gb/s or 3 Gb/s) could limit the hard drive's performance to the maximum transfer rate of the cable.
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What is SATA and how does it differ among its generations?
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What are the physical differences in SATA cables across different generations?
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What impact does using the wrong SATA cable have on hard drive performance?