The SATA (Serial ATA) interface has almost been forgotten, but the continuity of generations makes us from time to time raise the question of the compatibility of SATA 2 and SATA 3. Today this concerns mainly the use of new solid-state SSD drives, as well as the latest models hard drives, connected to motherboards released a couple of years ago. Typically, when it comes to backward compatibility devices, most users prefer not to notice the loss of performance, wanting to save money. The same thing happens with sata interfaces: the design of the connector allows the connection of both SATA 2 and SATA 3, there is no threat to the equipment if the connected device does not match the connector, so “put it as it is, it works.”

There are no design differences between SATA 2 and SATA 3. A-priory, SATA 2 is a data exchange interface with a bandwidth of up to 3 Gbit/s, SATA 3 It also provides data exchange speeds of up to 6 Gbit/s. Both specifications have a seven-pin connector.

When it comes to hard drives, during normal operation we will not notice any difference between connecting the device via the SATA 3 and SATA 2 interfaces. The mechanics of the hard drive do not provide high speeds; 200 Mb/s can be considered practically the limit (with 3 Gb/s maximum throughput). The release of hard drives with the SATA 3 interface can be considered a tribute to the upgrade. Such drives are connected to the ports of the second revision without loss in data exchange speed.

Solid state drives are a completely different matter. SSD devices are available only with a SATA 3 interface. Although you can connect them to a SATA 2 port without threatening the system, high read and write speeds are lost. The indicators drop by about half, so the very use of expensive devices does not justify itself. On the other hand, due to technological features, an SSD will work faster than a hard drive even when connected to a slow interface, losing half the speed.

The SATA 3 interface works for more high frequency than the previous specification, so latency is minimized, and a SATA 3 SSD connected to a SATA 2 port will perform better than HDD with SATA 2. However, this will be noticeable to the average user only during testing, and not during the process regular work with applications.

A not critical, but significant difference between SATA 3 and SATA 2 is the improved power management of the device.

Conclusions website

  1. Bandwidth SATA interface 3 reaches 6 Gbps.
  2. The throughput of the SATA 2 interface reaches 3 Gbit/s.
  3. For hard drives, SATA 3 can be considered useless.
  4. When working with SSDs, SATA 3 provides high data transfer speeds.
  5. The SATA 3 interface operates at a higher frequency.
  6. The SATA 3 interface theoretically provides improved device power management.

The SATA (Serial ATA) interface has almost been forgotten, but the continuity of generations makes us from time to time raise the question of the compatibility of SATA 2 and SATA 3. Today this concerns mainly the use of new solid state drives SSD, as well as the latest models of hard drives connected to motherboards released a couple of years ago. As a rule, when it comes to backward compatibility of devices, most users prefer not to notice the loss of performance, wanting to save money. The same thing happens with sata interfaces: the design of the connector allows the connection of both SATA 2 and SATA 3, there is no threat to the equipment if the connected device does not match the connector, so “let’s put it there and it works.”

There are no design differences between SATA 2 and SATA 3. A-priory, SATA 2 is a data exchange interface with a bandwidth of up to 3 Gbit/s, SATA 3 It also provides data exchange speeds of up to 6 Gbit/s. Both specifications have a seven-pin connector.

When it comes to hard drives, during normal operation we will not notice any difference between connecting the device via the SATA 3 and SATA 2 interfaces. The mechanics of the hard drive do not provide high speeds; 200 Mb/s can be considered practically the limit (with 3 Gb/s maximum throughput). The release of hard drives with the SATA 3 interface can be considered a tribute to the upgrade. Such drives are connected to the ports of the second revision without loss in data exchange speed.

Solid state drives are a completely different matter. SSD devices are available only with a SATA 3 interface. Although you can connect them to a SATA 2 port without threatening the system, high read and write speeds are lost. The indicators drop by about half, so the very use of expensive devices does not justify itself. On the other hand, due to technological features, an SSD will work faster than a hard drive even when connected to a slow interface, losing half the speed.

The SATA 3 interface operates at a higher frequency than the previous specification, so latency is minimized, and a solid-state drive with SATA 3 connected to the SATA 2 port will show higher performance than a hard drive with SATA 2. However, this will only be noticeable to the average user during testing , and not during normal work with applications.

A not critical, but significant difference between SATA 3 and SATA 2 is the improved power management of the device.

The difference between SATA 2 and SATA 3 is as follows:

  1. The throughput of the SATA 3 interface reaches 6 Gbit/s.
  2. The throughput of the SATA 2 interface reaches 3 Gbit/s.
  3. For hard drives, SATA 3 can be considered useless.
  4. When working with SSDs, SATA 3 provides high data transfer speeds.
  5. The SATA 3 interface operates at a higher frequency.
  6. The SATA 3 interface theoretically provides improved device power management.

Materials from http://thedifference.ru/ were used to create this article.

This article will talk about what allows you to connect a hard drive to a computer, namely, the hard drive interface. More precisely, about hard drive interfaces, because a great many technologies have been invented for connecting these devices throughout their existence, and the abundance of standards in this area can confuse an inexperienced user. However, first things first.

Hard drive interfaces (or strictly speaking, external drive interfaces, since they can be used not only by, but also by other types of drives, for example, drives for optical disks) are designed to exchange information between these devices external memory And motherboard. Hard drive interfaces, no less than the physical parameters of the drives, affect many of the operating characteristics of the drives and their performance. In particular, drive interfaces determine such parameters as the speed of data exchange between hard drive and motherboard, the number of devices that can be connected to the computer, the ability to create disk arrays, the ability to hot plug, support for NCQ and AHCI technologies, etc. It also depends on the hard drive interface which cable, cord or adapter you will need to connect it to the motherboard.

SCSI - Small Computer System Interface

The SCSI interface is one of the oldest interfaces designed for connecting storage devices in personal computers. Appeared this standard back in the early 1980s. One of its developers was Alan Shugart, also known as the inventor of the floppy disk drive.

Appearance of the SCSI interface on the board and the cable connecting to it

The SCSI standard (traditionally this abbreviation is read in Russian transcription as “skazi”) was originally intended for use in personal computers, as evidenced by the very name of the format - Small Computer System Interface, or system interface for small computers. However, it so happened that drives of this type were used mainly in top-class personal computers, and subsequently in servers. This was due to the fact that, despite the successful architecture and a wide set of commands, the technical implementation of the interface was quite complex and was not affordable for mass PCs.

However, this standard had a number of features that were not available for other types of interfaces. For example, the cord for connecting Small Computer System Interface devices can have a maximum length of 12 m, and the data transfer speed can be 640 MB/s.

Like the IDE interface that appeared a little later, SCSI interface is parallel. This means that the interface uses buses that transmit information over several conductors. This feature was one of the limiting factors for the development of the standard, and therefore a more advanced, consistent SAS standard (from Serial Attached SCSI) was developed as its replacement.

SAS - Serial Attached SCSI

This is what the SAS server disk interface looks like

Serial Attached SCSI was developed as an improvement to the rather old Small Computers System Interface for connecting hard drives. Despite the fact that Serial Attached SCSI uses the main advantages of its predecessor, it nevertheless has many advantages. Among them it is worth noting the following:

  • Use of a common bus by all devices.
  • The serial communication protocol used by SAS allows for fewer signal lines to be used.
  • There is no need for bus termination.
  • Virtually unlimited number of connected devices.
  • Higher throughput(up to 12 Gbit/s). Future implementations of the SAS protocol are expected to support data transfer rates of up to 24 Gbit/s.
  • Possibility of connecting drives with Serial ATA interface to the SAS controller.

As a rule, Serial Attached SCSI systems are built on the basis of several components. The main components include:

  • Target devices. This category includes the actual drives or disk arrays.
  • Initiators are chips designed to generate requests to target devices.
  • Data delivery system - cables connecting target devices and initiators

Serial Attached SCSI connectors come in different shapes and sizes, depending on the type (external or internal) and SAS versions. Below are the SFF-8482 internal connector and the SFF-8644 external connector designed for SAS-3:

On the left is an internal SAS connector SFF-8482; On the right is an external SAS SFF-8644 connector with a cable.

A few examples of the appearance of SAS cords and adapters: HD-Mini SAS cord and SAS-Serial ATA adapter cord.

On the left is the HD Mini SAS cable; On the right is an adapter cable from SAS to Serial ATA.

Firewire - IEEE 1394

Today you can often find hard drives with a Firewire interface. Although you can connect any types to your computer via the Firewire interface peripheral devices, and it cannot be called a specialized interface designed exclusively for connecting hard drives, however, Firewire has a number of features that make it extremely convenient for this purpose.

FireWire - IEEE 1394 - view on a laptop

The Firewire interface was developed in the mid-1990s. The development began with the well-known company Apple, which needed its own bus, different from USB, for connecting peripheral equipment, primarily multimedia. The specification describing the operation of the Firewire bus is called IEEE 1394.

Firewire is one of the most commonly used high-speed serial external bus formats today. The main features of the standard include:

  • Possibility of hot connection of devices.
  • Open bus architecture.
  • Flexible topology for connecting devices.
  • Data transfer speeds vary widely – from 100 to 3200 Mbit/s.
  • The ability to transfer data between devices without a computer.
  • Possibility of organization local networks using a tire.
  • Power transmission via bus.
  • A large number of connected devices (up to 63).

To connect hard drives (usually via external hard drive enclosures) via the Firewire bus, as a rule, a special SBP-2 standard is used, which uses the Small Computers System Interface protocol command set. It is possible to connect Firewire devices to a regular USB connector, but this requires a special adapter.

IDE - Integrated Drive Electronics

The abbreviation IDE is undoubtedly known to most users. personal computers. The interface standard for connecting IDE hard drives was developed by a well-known hard drive manufacturer - Western Digital. The advantage of IDE over other interfaces that existed at the time, in particular the Small Computers System Interface, as well as the ST-506 standard, was that there was no need to install a hard drive controller on the motherboard. The IDE standard implied installing a drive controller on the drive itself, and only a host interface adapter for connecting IDE drives remained on the motherboard.

IDE interface on motherboard

This innovation has improved the operating parameters of the IDE drive due to the fact that the distance between the controller and the drive itself has been reduced. In addition, installation IDE controller inside the hard drive case made it possible to somewhat simplify both motherboards and the production of hard drives themselves, since the technology gave freedom to manufacturers in terms of optimal organization of the logic of the drive’s operation.

The new technology was initially called Integrated Drive Electronics. Subsequently, a standard was developed to describe it, called ATA. This name is derived from the last part of the name of the PC/AT family of computers by adding the word Attachment.

An IDE cable is used to connect a hard drive or other device, such as an optical drive that supports Integrated Drive Electronics technology, to the motherboard. Since ATA refers to parallel interfaces (therefore it is also called Parallel ATA or PATA), that is, interfaces that provide simultaneous data transmission over several lines, its data cable has a large number of conductors (usually 40, and in latest versions protocol, it was possible to use an 80-core cable). A typical data cable for this standard is flat and wide, but round cables are also available. The power cable for Parallel ATA drives has a 4-pin connector and is connected to the computer's power supply.

Below are examples of IDE cable and round PATA data cable:

Appearance of the interface cable: on the left - flat, on the right in a round braid - PATA or IDE.

Thanks to the comparative low cost of Parallel ATA drives, the ease of implementation of the interface on the motherboard, as well as the ease of installation and configuration of PATA devices for the user, Integrated Drive Electronics type drives have for a long time pushed out devices of other interface types from the market of hard drives for budget-level personal computers.

However, the PATA standard also has a number of disadvantages. First of all, this is a limitation on the length that a Parallel ATA data cable can have - no more than 0.5 m. In addition, the parallel organization of the interface imposes a number of restrictions on the maximum data transfer speed. It does not support the PATA standard and many of the advanced features that other types of interfaces have, such as hot plugging of devices.

SATA - Serial ATA

View of the SATA interface on the motherboard

The SATA (Serial ATA) interface, as the name suggests, is an improvement over ATA. This improvement consists, first of all, in converting the traditional parallel ATA (Parallel ATA) into a serial interface. However, the differences between the Serial ATA standard and the traditional one are not limited to this. In addition to changing the data transmission type from parallel to serial, the data and power connectors also changed.

Below is the SATA data cable:

Data cable for SATA interface

This made it possible to use a much longer cord and increase the data transfer speed. However, the downside was the fact that PATA devices, which were present on the market in huge quantities before the advent of SATA, became impossible to connect directly to the new connectors. True, most new motherboards still have old connectors and support connecting older devices. However, the reverse operation - connecting a new type of drive to an old motherboard usually causes much more problems. For this operation, the user usually requires a Serial ATA to PATA adapter. The power cable adapter usually has a relatively simple design.

Serial ATA to PATA power adapter:

On the left is a general view of the cable; Enlarged on the right appearance PATA and Serial ATA connectors

However, the situation is more complicated with a device such as an adapter for connecting a serial interface device to a parallel interface connector. Typically, an adapter of this type is made in the form of a small microcircuit.

Appearance of a universal bidirectional adapter between SATA - IDE interfaces

Currently, the Serial ATA interface has practically replaced Parallel ATA, and PATA drives can now be found mainly only in fairly old computers. Another feature of the new standard that ensured its wide popularity was support.

Type of adapter from IDE to SATA

You can tell us a little more about NCQ technology. The main advantage of NCQ is that it allows you to use ideas that have long been implemented in the SCSI protocol. In particular, NCQ supports a system for sequencing read/write operations across multiple drives installed in a system. Thus, NCQ can significantly improve the performance of drives, especially arrays of hard disks.

Type of adapter from SATA to IDE

To use NCQ, technology support is required on the hard drive side, as well as on the motherboard host adapter. Almost all adapters that support AHCI also support NCQ. In addition, some older proprietary adapters also support NCQ. Also, for NCQ to work, it requires support from the operating system.

eSATA - External SATA

It is worth mentioning separately the eSATA (External SATA) format, which seemed promising at the time, but never became widespread. As you can guess from the name, eSATA is a type of Serial ATA designed for connecting exclusively external drives. The eSATA standard offers most of the capabilities of the standard for external devices, i.e. internal Serial ATA, in particular, the same system of signals and commands and the same high speed.

eSATA connector on a laptop

However, eSATA also has some differences from the internal bus standard that gave birth to it. In particular, eSATA supports a longer data cable (up to 2 m) and also has higher power requirements for drives. Additionally, eSATA connectors are slightly different from standard Serial ATA connectors.

Compared to other external buses, such as USB and Firewire, eSATA, however, has one significant drawback. While these buses allow the device to be powered via the bus cable itself, the eSATA drive requires special connectors for power. Therefore, despite the relatively high data transfer speed, eSATA is currently not very popular as an interface for connecting external drives.

Conclusion

Information stored on the hard drive cannot become useful to the user and accessible to application programs until it gets access CPU computer. Hard drive interfaces provide a means of communication between these drives and the motherboard. Today there are many various types hard drive interfaces, each of which has its own advantages, disadvantages and characteristics. We hope that the information provided in this article will be largely useful to the reader, because the choice of a modern hard drive is largely determined not only by its internal characteristics, such as capacity, cache memory, access and rotation speed, but also by the interface for which it was developed.

The eSATA port is no longer something exotic today. However, not all users are familiar with this port and have no idea what advantages and disadvantages this standard has when working with a personal computer.

eSATA port: basic information

Beginners, of course, will first of all be interested in knowing what an eSATA port is. If we try to answer this question as simply as possible, we can say that eSATA is a serial port standard, which in terms of ease of use and speed lies somewhere between traditional SATA and the USB 2.0 standard. The term itself has the following abbreviation - External Serial ATA. This is a port that uses advanced serial communication technologies and has the ability to hot-swappable hard drives and other devices connected to the computer. Despite the fact that the eSATA connection appeared back in 2004, today users quite often prefer more traditional technologies such as SATA and USB.

eSATA port: benefits

The eSATA standard, of course, would not have become widespread if it did not have objective advantages. These advantages include:

— the ability to extend the data cable up to two meters without the risk of signal distortion;

— eSATA signal compatibility with SATA;

— accelerated data transfer compared to USB 2.0 port;

- low cost of production: due to this circumstance, this connector can be used in many devices. For example, there is an external eSATA hard drive, and even flash drives;

— hard drives with an eSATA interface can be combined into RAID arrays. You can also replace hard drives on the fly, which is completely unthinkable when using a traditional SATA interface.

As you can see for yourself, this interface has many advantages, at least when compared with such familiar and traditional standards as SATA and USB 2.0.

eSATA port: disadvantages

When answering the question of what eSATA is, one cannot ignore the disadvantages of this type of connection. Although this type interface was first launched in 2004, not all devices are equipped with ports of this standard. So far, the use of this standard is complicated by a number of inconveniences, which include:

— physical incompatibility of eSATA and SATA ports;

- lower data transfer speed than SATA. This is confirmed by numerous synthetic tests;

— the cable length is limited to two meters, which is less than in the case of the USB standard;

— an eSATA hard drive requires additional power via USB and 1394 or through a regular outlet. This need often disappears in new models of external devices;

— eSATA and SATA use different signal levels;

— to organize eSATA, in some cases, a special controller is required on the system board;

— not too many devices have been released that support this standard yet.

If we talk about data transfer speeds, then in this regard eSATA is superior to the USB 2.0 standard, which is quite widespread today. At the same time, it is inferior to the more modern USB 3.0 standard. This may be the reason why eSATA connectors are not widely popular. It’s still much easier to work with USB, and the speed of the USB 3.0 version is higher.

eSATA: types

No matter how strange it may seem, the eSATA interface has its own variations. But, however, there are not so many of them. To be more precise, there are only two of them: actually, eSATA itself, which was already mentioned above, and ESATAp. Distinctive feature ESATAp port is that it is now possible to power the device directly via the eSATA cable. The SATA port required power supply through an external source. The postfix p means power, which means “power” in English. It might seem that with the advent of a standard such as eSATAp, all problems related to power supply would be solved. This port was quite ready to become self-sufficient. However, USB 3.0 appeared at the same time. eSATAp simply could not compete with it. However, any USB device It is quite possible to connect to the eSATA port. Interfaces make it possible to do this. In this case, the device will be simultaneously recharged and information transferred in both directions. The main problem is that some models of hard drives require not only the standard 5 V, but also as much as 12 V for power supply. Laptops simply do not provide such powerful power supplies. For this reason, an improved version of eSATAp was developed, which provides for the use of additional power contacts in the connector. This interface has received the unofficial name eSATAdp or dual power.

What to do if there is no eSATA?

Not very often, but sometimes there are situations when you need to remove an eSATA device if there is only a SATA port on the motherboard. Let's say you need to connect an external eSATA to some device. This can be done, only for this purpose you will need a passive extender that can be connected directly to the SATA on the motherboard. If we are talking about a netbook or laptop, then such a connection can only be made through PCCard adapters, as well as using an ExpressCard. In this case, the maximum cable length will be limited to only 1 m, and this is not entirely convenient.

External devices with eSATA support

At one time, the eSATA interface was predicted to have a bright future. Even today you can find an external hard drive with an eSATA interface on sale. The USB 3.0 port has not yet managed to displace its predecessor, USB port 2.0. Since the eSATA standard is primarily intended for fast data exchange, it is logical that the majority of the market for external devices that support this interface consists of various drives. These include flash drives and external hard drives. You can also find scanners and printers on sale that use this type of connection. There is also some confusion due to the small variety among SATA, eSATAp, eSATA and eSATAdp interfaces. It has led to consumers constantly being confused about cable and port compatibility. Even an eSATA adapter cannot always solve this problem, especially in cases where difficulties are associated not only with compatibility, but also with the need to provide additional 12V power. It is also worth noting that the eSATAdp standard has not yet been standardized. For now, all that remains is to carefully monitor the compatibility of the cables so as not to confuse SATA, eSATA and other cables. We can only hope that they will all finally be standardized, or that a universal port will replace the entire existing variety of SATA ports.

Why not USB or Fire Wire?

The answer to the question of what the eSATA interface is would not be complete without an analysis of the capabilities of competing interfaces. In this case we will be talking about USB or Fire Wire. There are three reasons why the eSATA port can be supplanted by these interfaces:

  1. To organize data exchange through these two ports, it is necessary to convert the SATA or PATA protocols to USB or FireWire. In this case, the bandwidth will have significant limitations. This was not very noticeable before, but with the advent of solid-state drives with a capacity of 500 GB or more, which today will surprise no one, this threshold has become quite noticeable.
  2. Even in the case of Fire Wire, there is a data transfer speed limit of 400 Mbps, since Fire Wire controllers operate according to the IEEE 1394A standard. This limitation is striking here not so much when using large-capacity hard drives, but when using high-speed and high-volume RAID arrays, which accordingly require fairly high speeds.
  3. USB and Fire Wire based drives do not have access to some features low level, for example, to S.M.A.R.T.eSATA at the same time freed from this deficiency. Competitive interfaces today are quite in demand among ordinary users due to their convenience. But in some cases you can’t do without an eSATA interface. So, for example, if the user needs high speed transfer of large-volume information, this standard is an ideal solution for such tasks. Its implementation, unfortunately, is associated with some technical difficulties, but if additional power is available, for example, using an external unit, this will not be a problem.

eSATA port: prospects

It is still difficult to say anything with a 100% guarantee regarding the eSATA interface. Without an attempt at prediction, the answer to the question of what eSATA is would not be complete. Today there are various devices on the market that support ports such as USB 3.0, USB 2.0, as well as the aforementioned Fire Wire. Therefore, the future of the eSATA port is uncertain. Manufacturers, on the one hand, are in no hurry to actively use this port in all their devices. On the other hand, they make drives with this interface, but they don’t forget about USB 3.0. The eSATA port looks pretty good in cases where connecting large storage devices is required, as well as processing multimedia content in HD quality. The interface will also help everyone who wants to create their own home RAID array. Many users prefer to use the slower, but simpler and more intuitive USB 2.0 interface in their daily work. Most users simply do not need to work with capacious and fast drives. In addition, users are often intimidated by the need to provide additional power to an eSATA device. They are willing to put up with some speed restrictions for the sake of convenience. However, in in some cases There is no way to do without it. So you shouldn’t expect the eSATA interface to have a significant impact on the market in the future. He will not give up his positions quickly, so there is still a need for him. Experts argue that this standard will exist until a newer standard is disseminated. Perhaps USB 3.0 will eventually take over. But until this happens, you can safely purchase eSATA-based drives.

Many computer users have come across the word SATA more than once, but not many know what it is. Should you pay attention to it when choosing a hard drive, system board or a ready-made computer? After all, the word SATA is now often mentioned in the characteristics of these devices.

We give a definition

SATA is a serial data transfer interface between various storage devices, which replaced the parallel ATA interface.

Work on creating this interface began in 2000.

In February 2000, on the initiative Intel A special working group was created, which included the leaders of IT technologies of those times and today: Dell, Maxtor, Seagate, APT Technologies, Quantum and many other equally significant companies.

As a result of two years of collaboration, the first SATA connectors appeared on motherboards at the end of 2002. They were used to transmit data through network devices.

And since 2003, the serial interface has been integrated into all modern motherboards.

To visually feel the difference between ATA and SATA, look at the photo below.

Serial ATA interface.

New interface on program level, is compatible with all existing hardware devices and provides higher data transfer rates.

As can be seen from photo above 7 contact wire has a smaller thickness, which provides a more convenient connection between each other various devices, and also allows you to increase the number of Serial ATA connectors on the motherboard.

In some motherboard models, their number can reach as many as 6.

Lower operating voltage, fewer contacts and microcircuits have reduced the heat generation of devices. Therefore, SATA port controllers do not overheat, which ensures even more reliable data transfer.

However, it is still problematic to connect most modern disk drives to the Serial ATA interface, so all manufacturers of modern motherboards have not yet abandoned the ATA (IDE) interface.

Cables and connectors

For full data transfer via the SATA interface, two cables are used.

One, 7-pin, directly for data transmission, and the second, 15-pin, power, for supplying additional voltage.

At the same time, the 15-pin power cable is connected to the power supply, through a regular 4-pin connector that produces two different voltages, 5 and 12 V.

The SATA power cable produces operating voltages of 3.3, 5 and 12 V, with a current of 4.5 A.

Cable width 2.4 cm.

To ensure a smooth transition from ATA to SATA in terms of power connections, you can still see the old 4-pin connectors on some hard drive models.

But as a rule, modern hard drives already come with only a new 15-pin connector.

The Serial ATA data cable can be connected to the hard drive and motherboard even when the latter are turned on, which could not be done with the old ATA interface.

This is achieved due to the fact that the grounding pins in the area of ​​the interface contacts are made slightly longer than the signal and power pins.

Therefore, when connecting, the ground wires come into contact first, and only then all the others.

The same can be said about the 15-pin power cable.


Table, Serial ATA power connector.

SATA Configuration

The main difference between the SATA and ATA configurations is the absence of special switches and Master/Slave type chips.

There is also no need to choose where to connect the device to the cable, because there are two such places on the ATA cable, and the device that is connected at the end of the cable is considered the main one in the BIOS.

The absence of Master/Slave settings not only greatly simplifies the hardware configuration, but also allows for faster installation OS, For example, .

Speaking of BIOS, settings in it won’t take much time either. You can quickly find and configure everything there.

Data transfer rate

Data transfer speed is one of the important parameters, for the improvement of which the SATA interface was developed.

But this figure in this interface has constantly increased and now the data transfer speed can reach up to 1969 MB/s. Much depends on the generation of the SATA interface, and there are already 5 of them.

The first generations of the serial interface, version “0,” could transfer up to 50 MB/s, but they did not catch on, as they were immediately replaced by SATA 1.0. the data transfer speed of which already reached 150 MB/s.

The appearance of SATA series and their capabilities.

Series:

  1. 1.0 – debut time 01/7/2003 – maximum theoretical data transfer speed 150 MB/s.
  2. 2.0 – will appear in 2004, fully compatible with version 1.0, maximum theoretical data transfer speed of 300 MB/s or 3 Gbit/s.
  3. 3.0 – debut time July 2008, start of release May 2009. Theoretical maximum speed is 600 MB/s or 6 Gb/s.
  4. 3.1 – debut time July 2011, speed – 600 MB/s or 6 Gbit/s. A more improved version than in paragraph 3.
  5. 3.2, as well as the SATA Express specification included in it - released in 2013. In this version, SATA and PCIe devices merged. Data transfer speed has increased to 1969 MB/s.

In this interface, data transfer is carried out at a speed of 16 Gbit/s or 1969 MB/s due to the interaction of two PCIe Express and SATA lines.

The SATA Express interface has begun to be implemented in Intel chipsets 9th series and at the beginning of 2014 was still little known.

If they are not introduced into the jungle of IT technologies, then in a nutshell we can say this.

Serial ATA Express is a kind of transition bridge that converts the normal signal transmission mode to SATA mode at a higher speed, which is possible thanks to PCI interface Express.

eSATA

eSATA is used to connect external devices, which once again confirms the versatility of the SATA interface.

More reliable connection connectors and ports are already used here.

The disadvantage is that to work external device You need a separate special cable.

But the interface developers soon solved this problem by introducing the power supply system directly into the main cable in the eSATAp interface.

eSATAp is a modified eSATA interface in the implementation of which USB 2.0 technology was used. The main advantage of this interface is the transmission of 5 and 12 Volt voltages via wires.

Accordingly, eSATAp 5 V and eSATAp 12 V are found.

There are other names for the interface, it all depends on the manufacturer. You may see similar names: Power eSATA, Power over eSATA, eSATA USB Hybrid Port (EUHP), eSATApd and SATA/USB Combo.

See below for what the interface looks like.

The Mini eSATAp interface has also been developed for laptops and netbooks.

mSATA

mSATA – implemented since September 2009. Designed for use in laptops, netbooks and other small PCs.

The photo above, as an example, shows two drives, one regular SATA, it’s at the bottom. Above is a disk with an mSATA interface.

For those interested, you can familiarize yourself with the characteristics of mSATA drives.

Such drives are installed in almost every ultrabook.

mSATA interface regular computers rarely used.

mSATA to Serial ATA Converter Adapter.

Conclusion

From the above it is clear that the SATA serial data transfer interface has not yet completely exhausted itself.