Serial ATA (SATA)

In computer hardware, Serial ATA (SATA, IPA: /ˈsæta/ or /ˈseɪˌtə/) is a computer bus technology primarily designed for transfer of data to and from a hard disk. It is the successor to the legacy AT Attachmentretroactively renamedParallel ATA (PATA) to distinguish it from Serial ATA. Both SATA and PATA drives are IDE (Integrated Drive Electronics) drives, although IDE is often misused to indicate PATA drives.

standard (ATA). This older technology was

Serial ATA innovations

SATA drops the master/slave shared bus of PATA, giving each device a dedicated cable and dedicated bandwidth. While this requires twice the number of host controllers to support the same number of SATA devices, at the time of SATA's introduction this was no longer a significant drawback. Another controller could be added into a controller ASIC at little cost beyond the addition of the extra seven signal lines and printed circuit board (PCB) space for the cable header.

Features allowed for by SATA but not by PATA include hot-swappingnative command queueing. and

To ease their transition to SATA, many manufacturers have produced drives which use controllers largely identical to those on their PATA drives and include a bridge chip on the logic board. Bridged drives have a SATA connector, may include either or both kinds of power connectors, and generally perform identically to native drives. They may, however, lack support for some SATA-specific features. As of 2004, all major hard drive manufacturers produce either bridged or native SATA drives.

SATA drives may be plugged into Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) controllers and communicate on the same physical cable as native SAS disks. SAS disks, however, may not be plugged into a SATA controller.

Physically, the SATA power and data cables are the most noticeable change from Parallel ATA. The SATA standard defines a data cable using seven conductors and 8 mm wide wafer connectors on each end. SATA cables can be up to 1 m (39 in) long. PATA ribbon cables, in comparison, carry either 40- or 80-conductor wires and are limited to 46 cm (18 in) in length. The reduction in conductors makes SATA connectors and cables much narrower than those of PATA, thus making them more convenient to route within tight spaces and reducing obstructions to air cooling. Unlike early PATA connectors, SATA connectors are keyed — it is not possible to install cable connectors upside down without considerable force.

The SATA standard also specifies a power connector sharply differing from the four-pin Molex connector used by PATA drives and many other computer components. Like the data cable, it is wafer-based, but its wider 15-pin shape should prevent confusion between the two. The seemingly large number of pins are used to supply three different voltages if necessary — 3.3 V, 5 V, and 12 V. Each voltage is supplied by three pins ganged together (and 6 pins for ground). This is because the small pins cannot supply sufficient current for some devices, so they are combined. One pin from each of the three voltages is also used for hotplugging. The same physical connections are used on 3.5-in (90mm) and 2.5-in (70mm) (notebook) hard disks. Some SATA drives include a PATA-style 4-pin Molex connector for use with power supplies that lack the SATA power connector. Also, adaptors are available to convert a 4-pin Molex connector to SATA power connector.

External SATA

eSATA was standardized in mid-2004, with specifically defined cables, connectors, and signal requirements for external SATA drives. eSATA is characterized by:

• Full SATA speed for external disks (115MB/s have been measured with external RAID enclosures)
• No protocol conversion from PATA/SATA to USB/Firewire, all disk features are available to the host
• Cable length is restricted to 2m, USB and Firewire span longer distances.
• Minimum and maximum transmit voltage decreased to 400mV - 500mV
• Minimum and maximum receive voltage decreased to 240mV - 500mV

USB and Firewire require conversion of all communication with the external disk, so external USB/Firewire enclosures include a PATA or SATA bridge chip that translates from the ATA protocol to USB or Firewire. Drive features like S.M.A.R.T. cannot be exploited that way and the achievable transfer speed with USB/Firewire is only about half of the entire bus data rate of about 50MB/s. This limited effective data transfer rate becomes very visible when using an external RAID array and also with fast single disks which may yield well over 70MB/s during real use.

Currently, most PC motherboards do not have an eSATA connector. eSATA may be enabled through the addition of an eSATA host bus adapter (HBA) or bracket connector for desktop systems or with a Cardbus or ExpressCard for notebooks.

Note: Prior to the final eSATA specification, there were a number of products designed for external connections of SATA drives. Some of these use the internal SATA connector or even connectors designed for other interface specifications, such as FireWire. These products are not eSATA compliant.

eSATA does not provide power, which means that external 2.5' disks which would otherwise be powered over the USB or Firewire cable need a separate power cable when connected over eSATA.