What Is
Serial ATA (SATA) Technology...
Written By:
Kia Javadi
Serial ATA
technology (commonly
referred to as SATA, S-ATA, or SerialATA)
is the new interface
for high volume storage drives and hard disks. The SATA
acronym stands for Serial Advanced Technology Attachment.
SATA technology has been designed to replace the older
parallel ATA standards (from which it evolved) found on IDE
hard drives and devices. Transfer rates for the old ATA
standard were commonly set to 33Mbps, 66Mbps, 100Mbps, and
133Mbps (ATA 33/66/100/133). SATA transfer rates
continue on from there with rates of 150Mbps for SATA I,
300Mbps for SATA II, and 600Mbps for SATA-600.
Physically Smaller But More Efficient...
The most obvious physical
difference between Parallel ATA and SATA cabling is the size
of the connector. The SATA cable utilizes a serial
transfer structure - featuring four or more wires (7 wires
for hard disks) used to create the communications link
between the nodes/devices. When compared to the 40-wire
parallel IDE ribbons of old, one can see that this reduction
in the physical number of wires tends to smaller and thinner
cables for SATA. This size difference helps a great deal
with air circulation as bulky ribbon cables have been
replaced by thinner and more compact interface links.
SATA cables will also help in shrinking the size of a
typical chassis/case as a connection can be made in a much
smaller space.
SATA technology will also
extend the maximum data communication path length.
Parallel ATA cables are traditionally 15"-24" long, but SATA
standards specify lengths in excess of 40" or more (with
room to grow).
40-pin ATA Ribbon Cable |
15-pin SATA Power Cable |
Will My
Older IDE
Drives Be Supported Anymore...
There is no need to worry about replacing your IDE
devices for the time being as motherboard manufacturers have
pledged dual support for the next few product generations.
Most new-model motherboards will feature the traditional 2 x
40-pin IDE Drive connectors and 2 x the new SATA connectors.
For people carrying over their IDE devices they can utilize
the provided connectors for up to two devices per chain.
For people looking to use the SATA ports the IDE ports may
still be needed to connect the optical drive (CD/DVD/CDRW)
to the system. While almost every hard drive found on
the 40-pin IDE standard can be found in a similar SATA
version, optical drives have not been quick to change and
are still heavily dependent on the old standard. One
reason for this is that the improved performance offered by
SATA cannot be fully realized with optical media devices so
there is little incentive to make the change. Eventually all
40-pin IDE devices will be replaced by SATA to cut costs and
unify standards. Until then, however, both standards
still have important rolls in the industry and should be
around for quite some time. |
