Serial Advanced Technology Attachment (SATA)

An association of leading PC technology companies developed the Serial Advanced Technology Attachment (ATA) storage interface for hard drives and ATA Packet Interface (ATAPI) devices.

The section on SATA 1 explains why SATA was developed, and the advantages it has over parallel ATA.

Serial ATA is cheaper alternative to SCSI, with a slight compromise on high performance and redundancy. SCSI drives spin faster than SATA, which means that data can be pulled of them faster. However as SATA drives spin more slowly than SCSI they produce less heat, noise, and vibrations. This is not too much of a problem in a dedicated computing room, but is important when users have their computers right next to them.

The section on SATA 2 describes the new SATA specification which will allow development of lower cost mass storage systems with performance similar to SCSI.

The next section looks are some real SATA examples, typical costs, and some implementation tips.

The final section discusses SCSI drives, including serially attached SCSI (SAS).

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