EXPLORE IT RESOURCES

What Is a SATA Hard Drive?

A SATA hard drive is a type of rewritable mass storage device characterized by respectable transmission speeds, excellent storage capacities, and flawless support by virtually all operating systems and computer motherboards.

SATA hard drive can be found inside desktop computers, laptops, and servers. It’s often easy to tell that your computer comes with a SATA hard drive because of the characteristic noise SATA hard drives tent to make when reading or writing data.

SATA hard drives intended for desktop computers are typically 4 inches wide, 1.03 inches tall, and 5.79 inches long, and they are usually referred to as 3.5-inch hard drives. SATA hard drives intended for laptops are typically 2.7 inches wide, 0.37 inches tall, and 3.96 inches long, and they are usually referred to as 2.5-inch hard drives.

SATA is an abbreviation of Serial Advanced Technology Attachment, a computer bus interface that connects host bus adapters to mass storage devices. SATA is a successor to the Parallel ATA (PATA) standard, which was designed in 1986 and was for many years the most common and the least expensive interface for internal computer storage devices. But after the introduction of SATA in 2003, PATA started to fade away.

Compared to PATA, SATA has several key advantages. Firstly, SATA cables consist of only 7 conductors instead of 40 or 80, making the interface much more suitable for compact desktop computers and laptops. Additionally, SATA supports hot swapping, a feature that makes it possible to replace or add a hard drive without stopping or shutting down the system. Furthermore, the SATA interface supports faster data-transfer speeds through higher signaling rates.

The specification of the SATA interface is maintained by the Serial ATA International Organization (SATA-IO) non-profit organization, whose purpose is to provide the computing industry with guidance and support for implementing the SATA specification. Members of this organization include Intel, Hewlett-Packard, Dell, SanDisk, Western Digital, and many other major hardware manufacturers.

SATA Connector

SATA vs. PATA

The SATA interface is an upgraded version of the Integrated Drive Electronics (IDE) specification used by the PATA interface. While the PATA interface required bulky ribbon-type cables, the SATA cables are thinner and lighter, making them easy to use and store.

Important Features of Serial-ATA (SATA)

Some of the noteworthy features of SATA are discussed here. However, these are not exclusive but must be known by a SATA user.

Low Operating Voltage

While the previous 100 Mbps or 133 Mbps ATA versions use 5.0 volts or 3.3 volts, the SATA interface operates on as low as 0.5 volts. The higher voltage requirements limited the highest data transfer rate practically at 100 Mbps for PATA and predecessors. On the other hand, the SATA hard drives can achieve a data transfer rate of up to 600 Mbps, making them the favorite choice for voluminous data transfer devices.

Simple Connections

SATA uses a seven-wire cable in place of the 40 pin/80 wire ribbon cable used by PATA. The sleek SATA cable reduces the space requirement, boosts reliability, and aids in better airflow, resulting in improved system cooling. Moreover, the length of a SATA cable can go up to 1 meter compared to the 18-inch PATA ribbon cable making installation more flexible. The connectors on a SATA cable are smaller, easy to install, and less costly than the 40 pins PATA connectors.

There are two major categories of SATA-enabled storage devices: SATA-enabled HDDs and SATA-enabled SSDs.

Although both the storage drives are used for data storage purposes, the technology used to store data is entirely different for HDD and SSD.

Due to the inherent delay of booting in HDD, it takes a little more time to boot than the SSD. However, there is almost no effect on the data transfer speed of the SATA interface due to the booting delay.

Therefore, the data transfer speed claimed by the SATA interface used on HDD and SSD remains the same.

When choosing between the HDD and SSD, two major deciding factors are the cost and lifespan. The SSDs are almost double the price of an HDD but have a lifespan double of the HDD.

Moreover, the HDDs are prone to mechanical failures due to the moving parts, which is not an issue in SSD as there are no moving parts at all.

Therefore, when it comes to comparing the two drives based on SATA-related performance, there is not much difference, and you can go for anyone suited to your needs.