Serial ATA is a computer bus interface that connects host bus adapters to mass storage devices such as hard disk drives, optical drives, and solid-state drives.
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19 Facts About Serial ATA
2.
Serial ATA succeeded the earlier Parallel ATA standard to become the predominant interface for storage devices.
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3.
In contrast, parallel Serial ATA uses a 16-bit wide data bus with many additional support and control signals, all operating at a much lower frequency.
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4.
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.
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5.
In general, SSerial ATA devices fulfill the device-side hot-plugging requirements, and most SSerial ATA host adapters support this function.
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6.
Windows device drivers that are labeled as SSerial ATA 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 SSerial ATA's advanced features before AHCI became popular.
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7.
Special eSSerial ATA connector is specified for external devices, and an optionally implemented provision for clips to hold internal connectors firmly in place.
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8.
Female SSerial ATA ports are for use with SSerial ATA data cables that have locks or clips to prevent accidental unplugging.
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9.
Some SSerial ATA cables have right- or left-angled connectors to ease connection to circuit boards.
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10.
SSerial ATA specifies a different power connector than the four-pin Molex connector used on Parallel Serial ATA devices .
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11.
Some early SSerial ATA drives included the four-pin Molex power connector together with the new fifteen-pin connector, but most SSerial ATA drives now have only the latter.
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12.
Standardized in 2004, eSSerial ATA provides a variant of SSerial ATA meant for external connectivity.
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13.
Physical dimensions of the mSSerial ATA 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 SSerial ATA host controller instead of the PCI Express host controller.
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14.
SSerial ATA specification defines three distinct protocol layers: physical, link, and transport.
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15.
Generally, the actual SSerial ATA signalling is half-duplex, meaning that it can only read or write data at any one time.
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16.
SSerial ATA defines multipliers, which allows a single SSerial ATA controller port to drive up to fifteen storage devices.
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17.
Many motherboards offer a "Legacy Mode" option, which makes SSerial ATA drives appear to the OS like PSerial ATA drives on a standard controller.
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18.
SCSI buses allow connection of several drives on one shared channel, whereas SSerial ATA allows one drive per channel, unless using a port multiplier.
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19.
Inexpensive Serial ATA and SSerial ATA drives evolved in the home-computer market, hence there is a view that they are less reliable.
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