Well this ought to make working with SATA drives a lot more pleasant, that’s for sure. Designed to have that Ethernet cable ‘feel’, the new options in cables coming out will not only be more manageable, but simpler to use as well.

Improvements to Serial ATA cables will roll out in the coming months as a promoter organization works to take the spec outside the box.

The Serial ATA International Organization (SATA-IO) has developed xSATA, which extends the cable length of the external SATA cable, as well as ClickConnect, an improved connection scheme.

The goal is to improve the experience of external SATA, which has suffered somewhat from manufacturers simply connecting early eSATA drives with the internal cables. Since internal SATA drives are rarely docked an undocked, subjecting them to frequent loads and unloads stressed the cables and could cause them to fail, members of the promoter group said.

The first version of the eSATA spec allowed a cable length of 2 meters. The xSATA addition will extend that to 8 meters, permitting users additional flexibility in setting up their devices. The first eSATA products are already rolling out, including the Scientific Atlanta Explorer 9300HD, the first PVR box to include support for external SATA storage. The 3-Gbyte extension to the SATA spec is also being deployed; although the speed upgrade is also part of the SATA-2 specification, SATA-IO executives said there is a slight misperception that only the SATA-2 spec contains the speed upgrade.

The SATA-IO finished their third plugfest last week, demonstrating how far the technology has come. Over 200 participants representing 61 companies showed up, according to Joni Clark, the SATA-IO’s marketing chairwoman.

“From a hard drive perspective it’s pretty exciting for us to take the drive outside the box running at internal speeds,” Clark said.