Serial ATA spec requires SATA 20 devices be capable of hot plugging; that is, devices that meet the specification are capable of insertion or removal of a device into or from a backplane connector that has power on.
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16 Facts About SATA 20
2.
In general, SATA 20 devices fulfill the device-side hot-plugging requirements, and most SATA 20 host adapters support this function.
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3.
Windows device drivers that are labeled as SATA 20 are often running in IDE emulation mode unless they explicitly state that they are AHCI mode, in RAID mode, or a mode provided by a proprietary driver and command set that allowed access to SATA 20's advanced features before AHCI became popular.
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4.
Special eSATA 20 connector is specified for external devices, and an optionally implemented provision for clips to hold internal connectors firmly in place.
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5.
Female SATA 20 ports are for use with SATA 20 data cables that have locks or clips to prevent accidental unplugging.
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6.
Some SATA 20 cables have right- or left-angled connectors to ease connection to circuit boards.
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7.
SATA 20 specifies a different power connector than the four-pin Molex connector used on Parallel ATA devices .
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8.
Some early SATA 20 drives included the four-pin Molex power connector together with the new fifteen-pin connector, but most SATA 20 drives now have only the latter.
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9.
Standardized in 2004, eSATA 20 provides a variant of SATA 20 meant for external connectivity.
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10.
Physical dimensions of the mSATA 20 connector are identical to those of the PCI Express Mini Card interface, but the interfaces are electrically incompatible; the data signals need a connection to the SATA 20 host controller instead of the PCI Express host controller.
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11.
SATA 20 specification defines three distinct protocol layers: physical, link, and transport.
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12.
Generally, the actual SATA 20 signalling is half-duplex, meaning that it can only read or write data at any one time.
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13.
SATA 20 defines multipliers, which allows a single SATA 20 controller port to drive up to fifteen storage devices.
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14.
Many motherboards offer a "Legacy Mode" option, which makes SATA 20 drives appear to the OS like PATA drives on a standard controller.
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15.
SCSI buses allow connection of several drives on one shared channel, whereas SATA 20 allows one drive per channel, unless using a port multiplier.
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16.
Inexpensive ATA and SATA 20 drives evolved in the home-computer market, hence there is a view that they are less reliable.
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