We examined the conformational preferences of the 2-O-sulfated-3,6-α-D-anhydrogalactose (compound I) and two 1,3 linked disaccharides constituting-κ or ι-carrageenans using density functional and ab initio methods in gas phase and aqueous solution. Systematic modifications of two torsion angles leading to 324 and 144 starting geometries for the compound I and each disaccharide were used to generate adiabatic maps using B3LYP/6-31G(d). The lower energy conformers were then fully optimized using B3LYP, B3PW91 and MP2 with several basis sets. Overall, we discuss the impact of full relaxation on the energy and structure of the dominant conformations, present the performance comparison with previous molecular mechanics calculations if available, and determine whether our results are impacted, when polarization and diffuse functions are added to the 6-31G(d) basis set, or when the MP2 level of theory is used.