SATA

Source:wikipedia.com

SATA

Designed as a successor to the Advanced Technology Attachment standard (ATA), it is expected to eventually replace the older technology (retroactively renamed Parallel ATA or PATA, also known as IDE or EIDE). Serial ATA adapters and devices communicate over a high-speed serial cable.

Capacity 1.5 Gbit/s, 3.0 Gbit/s, 6.0 Gbit/s Style: Serial
Cables and connectors
Connectors and cables present the most visible differences between SATA and Parallel ATA drives. Unlike PATA, the same connectors are used on 3.5-in (90 mm) SATA hard disks for desktop and server computers and 2.5-in (70 mm) disks for portable or small computers; this allows 2.5″ drives to be used in desktop computers without the need for wiring adapters (a mounting adaptor is still likely to be needed to securely mount the drive).
Some commentators have criticized SATA power connectors and data connectors for their fragility and poor robustness — the thin plastic tops of the connectors (see power connector picture at right) can easily break due to shearing force when the user pulls the plug at a non-orthogonal angle, as can the connectors on drives they connect to. In the case of a broken connector on a hard drive, this could result in a complete loss of access to all data stored on the drive.
Power Supply
Standard Connector
The micro connector originated with SATA 2.6. It is intended for 1.8 inch hard drives. There is also a micro data connector, which it is similar to the standard data connector but is slightly thinner. The SATA standard also specifies a new power connector. Like the data cable, it is wafer-based, but its wider 15-pin shape prevents accidental mis-identification and forced insertion of the wrong connector type. Native SATA devices favor the SATA power-connector over the old four-pin Molex connector (found on most PATA equipment), although some SATA drives retain older 4-pin Molex in addition to the SATA power connector.
*ADVANTAGES:
A third voltage is supplied – 3.3 V – in addition to the traditional 5 V and 12 V.
Each voltage transmits through three pins ganged together – because the small pins by themselves cannot supply sufficient current for some devices. (Each pin should be able to provide 1.5 A.)
Five pins ganged together provide ground.
For each of the three voltages, one of the three pins serves for hotplugging. The ground pins and power pins 3, 7, and 13 are longer on the plug (located on the SATA device) so they will connect first. A special hot-plug receptacle (on the cable or a backplane) can connect ground pins 4 and 12 first.
Pin 11 can function for staggered spinup, activity indication, or nothing. Staggered spinup is used to prevent many drives from spinning up simultaneously, as this may draw too much power. Activity is an indication of whether the drive is busy, and is intended to give feedback to the user through an LED.

*DISADVANTAGES:
Adaptors exist which can convert a 4-pin Molex connector to a SATA power connector. However, because the 4-pin Molex connectors do not provide 3.3 V power, these adapters provide only 5 V and 12 V power and leave the 3.3 V lines unconnected. This precludes the use of such adapters with drives that require 3.3 V power. Understanding this, drive manufacturers have largely left the 3.3 V power lines unused. However, without 3.3 V power, the SATA device may not be able to implement hotplugging as mentioned in the previous paragraph.

*ECONOMIC COST
Asus - ASUS SATA Cable- $29.49

IDE CONNECTOR
Integrated Drive Electronics is a standard electronic interface used between a computer motherboard’s data paths or bus and the computer’s disk storage devices. The IDE interface is based on the IBM PC Industry Standard Architecture (ISA) 16-bit bus standard, but it is also used in computers that use other bus standards. Most computers sold today use an enhanced version of IDE called Enhanced Integrated Drive Electronics (EIDE). In today’s computers, the IDE controller is often built into the motherboard.
IDE is one of the most widely-used hard drive interfaces on the market. The fancy name refers to how the technology integrates the electronics controller into the drive itself. While the original IDE standard could only support hard drives containing up to 540 MB of data, the new standard, EIDE (Enhanced-IDE), supports hard drives with over 250 GB of data. It also allows for data transfer rates that are over twice as fast as the original IDE.Another common hard drive interface is SCSI, which is faster than EIDE, but usually costs more per megabyte. Newer hard drives may also use a SATA (Serial ATA) connection, which improves speed and power consumption over both SCSI and IDE.

Source:wikipedia.com