17 Facts About SATA

Serial ATA spec requires SATA 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.

In general, SATA devices fulfill the device-side hot-plugging requirements, and most SATA host adapters support this function.

Windows device drivers that are labeled as SATA 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's advanced features before AHCI became popular.

Special eSATA connector is specified for external devices, and an optionally implemented provision for clips to hold internal connectors firmly in place.

Female SATA ports are for use with SATA data cables that have locks or clips to prevent accidental unplugging.

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Some SATA cables have right- or left-angled connectors to ease connection to circuit boards.

SATA specifies a different power connector than the four-pin Molex connector used on Parallel ATA devices (and earlier small storage devices, going back to ST-506 hard disk drives and even to floppy disk drives that predated the IBM PC).

Some early SATA drives included the four-pin Molex power connector together with the new fifteen-pin connector, but most SATA drives now have only the latter.

Standardized in 2004, eSATA provides a variant of SATA meant for external connectivity.

Mini-SATA, which is distinct from the micro connector, was announced by the Serial ATA International Organization on September 21, 2009.

Physical dimensions of the mSATA 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 host controller instead of the PCI Express host controller.

SATA specification defines three distinct protocol layers: physical, link, and transport.

Generally, the actual SATA signalling is half-duplex, meaning that it can only read or write data at any one time.

SATA defines multipliers, which allows a single SATA controller port to drive up to fifteen storage devices.

Many motherboards offer a "Legacy Mode" option, which makes SATA drives appear to the OS like PATA drives on a standard controller.

SCSI buses allow connection of several drives on one shared channel, whereas SATA allows one drive per channel, unless using a port multiplier.

Inexpensive ATA and SATA drives evolved in the home-computer market, hence there is a view that they are less reliable.