Are serial ATA (SATA) and ATA the same?
PATA drives, the most common drive interface until recently, are recognizable by the 40 pin flat ribbon cables connecting them to the motherboard. They have several disadvantages • short cable length (18″) • cables block airflow, reducing coolng efficiency • limited to 133 MBps (max theoretical) transfer rate PATA was becoming a bottleneck with increasing CPU, memory and bus speeds, so SATA was developed as the answer. As the name implies, PATA drives transfer data in parallel; SATA drives transfer data serially. SATA is also lower power than PATA, using 250 mV as opposed to PATA’s 5V signals. SATA uses thin 7 pin cables up to 3′ long that can be routed out of the way of airflow. SATA II drives transfer data at up to 300 MBps and in 2008, SATA III will do up to 600 MBps. Note that in business and other high end environments, SCSI has been commonly used for its higher performance and reliability.
