What Is SATA Interface?

SATA Connector

Serial Advanced Technology Attachment (SATA). The SATA interface is a design for transferring data among storage devices like hard drives and optic drives.

In comparison with the ATA interface, the SATA offers a faster transfer rate with features and improvements we will see throughout the guide.

Features And Improvements

The interesting thing with the SATA is the new cable that uses only 7 wires. With only 7 wires the cable is thin and permits a better airflow inside the computer case. The older cables used for ATA interface were cutting the airflow with their large ribbons and were frustrating to manipulate.

With the SATA it is as easy as plug here and plug there. No cable twisting problems like the ATA.

An other interesting feature from SATA interface is the possibility to hot swapping. It means, you can plug or unplug hardware without having to reboot the computer. This feature has been taken from the USB technology that already makes the use of swapping.

SATA 1 And SATA 2 Standards

The SATA 1 named SATA 150, offers a bandwidth of 1.5 Gbit/s. In comparison with the ATA/133, it was a slight advantage. The first SATA generation was more used for its features than its bandwidth.

Le SATA 2 a appelé SATA 300 est la nouvelle génération et offre le premier avantage de bande de fréquence réel travaillant sur le taux de 3 Gbit/s. C'est plus que deux fois que l'ATA peut faire. Avec une bande de fréquence comme cela, vous pouvez finalement sentir la différence entre les 2 technologies.

The SATA 3 is on the way and will offer a bandwidth of 6 Gbit/s. The ability of using more than 1 drives by cables should appear on the 3rd generation.

Compatibility

The ATA and The SATA are not compatible. You cannot plug a SATA drive in the ATA interface. This says, I heard there are hybrid hard drives supporting both technologies. This is only a speculation, I did not investigate to see if they exist.

On the other hand, SATA 1 and SATA 2 are backward and forward compatible. If your motherboard does not support the SATA 300, a PCI extension card for SATA should do the trick.

Another way for adding more compatibility has been introduced by hard drive's manufacturers. A jumper on SATA 2 hard drives can be set to force the drive to run under SATA 1.

[I hope you appreciated the SATA interface guide
and I invite you to take a look at the other guides.]

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