Methods and structure for delayed physical link activation in systems that utilize smart cabling are provided. The system includes a Serial Attached Small Computer System Interface (SAS) device comprising a physical link and a controller. The controller is able to disable the physical link to prevent discovery from occurring along the physical link, to detect a cable attached to a physical link, to acquire cable parameters from a memory of the cable, and to configure the physical link based on the acquired cable parameters to enable communications along the cable. The controller is also able to enable the configured physical link to trigger discovery for the physical link.