Monday, September 15, 2008

What is SATA?

Serial ATA is an enhancement to the ATA standard for for connecting storage to PC's.

All versions of ATA up until ATA-7 in 2004 utilized parallel transfer of data from the motherboard to the drive controller built onto the disk.

The ATA-7 specification introduced Serial ATA.

Serial ATA Standards

The original Serial ATA standard offered miniminal improvement over the existing 133MBps bandwidth of the existing Parallel ATA standard.

Serial ATA standards are constantly evolving to meet higher bandwidth requirements.

Serial ATA TypeBandwithBus SpeedSignal Rate
SATA-150150MBps1500MHz1.5Gbps
SATA-300300MBps3000MHz3.0Gbps
SATA-600600MBps6000MHz6.0Gbps

Serial ATA Data Cables

Higher bandwidth requirements were pushing requirements for shorter Parallel ATA data cables. Serial ATA reversed this trend by allowing data cables up to 1 meter in length.

eSATA (External SATA) allows the use of shielded cables up to 2 meters in length for external drives.

Serial ATA Data Cable

Serial ATA Power Cables

The serial ATA power cable uses a 15-pin wafer connector to provide 3.3, 5, or 12 volts to ATA devices.

Serial ATA Power Cable

source: techfaq

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