• Types of sata connectors. What is Sata? Types of connectors and speed. What do the different keys mean?

    Probably, each of us, when choosing a computer component, has encountered incomprehensible names that could affect the compatibility of devices. So, without understanding the necessary connectors, the user experienced a system crash or other similar problems.

    Usually, those who bought a ready-made PC do not face the need to study interfaces. This is necessary for those who independently assemble the system, from the motherboard to thermal paste, or who have problems with one of the devices and require replacement.

    What is this?

    The SATA interface is a serial interface that allows you to exchange information with drives. The motherboard has a SATA connector, and the same connector is included.

    Start

    This type of connector appeared thanks to the previous one, with a similar name ATA. It had a parallel circuit, but was noticeably outdated, especially by 2017. In general, plans for its replacement began in 2000. Then Intel gathered around itself specialists who became part of a special development group. So this included the now well-known partners Seagate, Dell, Quantum, Maxtor, etc.

    Just a couple of years later, the SATA hard drive interface became a reality for device manufacturers. In 2002, the first motherboards with this connector entered the market. It began to be used as a data transmitter through network devices. The very next year it was introduced into modern variations of the motherboard.

    New

    It must be said that the new product is compatible at the software level with all hardware devices and is a high-speed data transmitter. If PATA has 40 contacts, then for SATA there are only 7. The cable occupies a small area, so air resistance is significantly reduced, and therefore the system components do not overheat. It's much easier now with the wires inside the system unit.

    The cable was also made of higher quality so that you don’t have to worry about its condition after multiple connections. The power cable has also been redesigned. By the way, it supplies three voltages at once along several lines: +12, +5 and +3.3 V. Considering that modern devices have largely switched to operating the +3.3 V line, therefore they often use a passive adapter, which is often found complete with motherboard: IDE to SATA. There are components that, in addition to SATA power supply, can also acquire the Molex format.

    Interestingly, the SATA interface also introduced a new connection technology that was previously used by PATA. Nowadays it’s rare to have two devices on one cable. Each device received its own wire, so they now work independently, independently of each other. This eliminated many problems associated with simultaneous operation, system installation, unterminated loops, etc.

    Diversity

    As mentioned earlier, the interface has two types: one 7-pin, the second 15-pin. The first option is used to connect the data bus, the second option is designed specifically for power. The standard allows users to change the configuration, so it is possible to change a 15-pin type to a Molex type, which has 4 contacts. But you should understand that if you use both types of power connectors, the device will malfunction and you will have to purchase a new one.

    The SATA drive interface operates through two channels of information transfer: from the device to the controller and back. The standard was endowed with technologies of different types. For example, there is an LVDS function that is responsible for signal transmission.

    The types of connectors don't end there. There is also a 13-pin version, which is more often found on servers, gadgets and other thin devices. This connector is combined and consists of 7- and 6-pin. There is also an adapter for this case.

    Mini version

    Before we find out the types of SATA interfaces, it’s worth talking about one more connector that appeared in revision 2.6. The slimline version was developed for small-sized devices. This refers to optical drives in laptops. Compared to their older version, both connectors are incompatible, since there is a difference in the width of the power connector, and the pin spacing is reduced. In addition, such a connector operates only on one +5 V voltage line. But in general, there are inexpensive adapters for each such connector.

    First type

    SATA drive interfaces come in a wide variety. Over the course of 15 years, they were improved, improved, finalized and redesigned. As a result, the first revision was released at speeds of up to 1.5 Gbit/s. The standard was introduced in 2003. It was designed to operate at a frequency of 1.5 Hz, which provided a throughput of 150 MB/s. Considering that these were the first attempts to develop an interface, this result was almost identical to the Ultra ATA performance. Despite the same numbers, the main advantage of the new product was considered to be a serial bus instead of a parallel one.

    One might assume that this technology is still inferior in speed, but all shortcomings were compensated by working at high frequencies. This option was available because channel synchronization was no longer necessary and the cord's noise immunity had increased.

    Second type

    The second revision became known the very next year. Its speed increased noticeably, as did its frequency. The specification now ran at 3 GHz, with a throughput of 3 Gbit/s. Among the new products, we also noted the appearance of a proprietary nForce 4 chipset controller. It so happened that no one immediately noticed that both revisions were no longer compatible. Although theoretically this was implied, if we take into account the speed matching. But in reality it turned out that some devices and controllers required manual operation; all parameters had to be adjusted independently.

    Third type

    This revision became known only 5 years later, in 2008. The speed of the SATA interface is already 6 Gbit/s. The developers tried to maintain synchronization not only of cables and connectors, but also of protocol exchange.

    The novelty later received two more versions. This is how types 3.1 and 3.2 appeared. The first option got mSATA, the so-called option for mobile devices. A technology has also become known in which the optical drive stops consuming energy in standby mode. The performance of SSD drives has improved, which has led to their popularity. Also, revision 3.1 acquired host identification of the device’s capabilities and reduced power consumption.

    Revision 3.2 received another name Express. The design has changed slightly, in which the port looks like two assembled connectors in length. Thus, it became possible to use two types of drives: SATA and SATA Express. The speed has increased to 8 Gbit/s if you connect only through one port, but if you use two at once - then 16 Gbit/s. Among other things, new products included in this revision include the new µSSD interface.

    Variety

    In addition to the main types, the SATA interface (HDD) has acquired modifications. So in 2004, eSATA became known, which made it possible to connect external devices, while it was possible to use “hot swap”.

    This standard has a number of features. For example, the connectors are not as fragile as the original type. They are created specifically for multiple connections. They are not SATA compatible and also have shielded connectors.

    To use this type, you need to get two wires, including a data bus and a power cable. It was also decided to lengthen the wire to 2 meters so that there would be no more losses, and the signal levels were changed.

    Decreased

    In 2009, another SATA interface appeared, but with reduced parameters. Mini-SATA is considered a solid state drive form factor. Typically such devices have small dimensions of 61x30x3 mm. Such hard drives are placed in netbooks and other devices that accept smaller copies of SSD drives. The connector for them is called mSATA and copies a PCI Express Mini Card. Both types are electrically compatible, but require switching.

    Flaw

    Also known to the world is eSATAp, which was developed from eSATA. His main task was to combine the interface with the familiar USB2.0. Its advantage was considered to be the transmission of information via +5 and +12 V channels. There was also a similar option for laptops.

    Perspective

    Despite the fact that the SATA interface is still actively functioning in various devices, it is being developed and developed, many analogues are appearing on the market, which in the future may become a replacement for this standard. SAS, for example, is somewhat faster and more reliable, although more expensive. Compatible with SATA, but consumes more power.

    Thunderbolt also showed itself on the positive side. Designed for connecting peripheral devices to a PC. Appeared for the first time in 2010. Intel developed this type to replace all popular interfaces. The transmission speed reaches 10 Gbps, the length is up to 3 meters, supports many useful protocols, as well as the possibility of “hot plugging”.

    This article will talk about what allows you to connect a hard drive to a computer, namely, the hard drive interface. More precisely, about hard drive interfaces, because a great many technologies have been invented for connecting these devices throughout their existence, and the abundance of standards in this area can confuse an inexperienced user. However, first things first.

    Hard drive interfaces (or strictly speaking, external drive interfaces, since they can be not only drives, but also other types of drives, for example, optical drives) are designed to exchange information between these external memory devices and the motherboard. Hard drive interfaces, no less than the physical parameters of the drives, affect many of the operating characteristics of the drives and their performance. In particular, drive interfaces determine such parameters as the speed of data exchange between the hard drive and the motherboard, the number of devices that can be connected to the computer, the ability to create disk arrays, the possibility of hot plugging, support for NCQ and AHCI technologies, etc. . It also depends on the hard drive interface which cable, cord or adapter you will need to connect it to the motherboard.

    SCSI - Small Computer System Interface

    The SCSI interface is one of the oldest interfaces designed for connecting storage devices in personal computers. This standard appeared in the early 1980s. One of its developers was Alan Shugart, also known as the inventor of the floppy disk drive.

    Appearance of the SCSI interface on the board and the cable connecting to it

    The SCSI standard (traditionally this abbreviation is read in Russian transcription as “skazi”) was originally intended for use in personal computers, as evidenced by the very name of the format - Small Computer System Interface, or system interface for small computers. However, it so happened that drives of this type were used mainly in top-class personal computers, and subsequently in servers. This was due to the fact that, despite the successful architecture and a wide set of commands, the technical implementation of the interface was quite complex and was not affordable for mass PCs.

    However, this standard had a number of features that were not available for other types of interfaces. For example, the cord for connecting Small Computer System Interface devices can have a maximum length of 12 m, and the data transfer speed can be 640 MB/s.

    Like the IDE interface that appeared a little later, the SCSI interface is parallel. This means that the interface uses buses that transmit information over several conductors. This feature was one of the limiting factors for the development of the standard, and therefore a more advanced, consistent SAS standard (from Serial Attached SCSI) was developed as its replacement.

    SAS - Serial Attached SCSI

    This is what the SAS server disk interface looks like

    Serial Attached SCSI was developed as an improvement to the rather old Small Computers System Interface for connecting hard drives. Despite the fact that Serial Attached SCSI uses the main advantages of its predecessor, it nevertheless has many advantages. Among them it is worth noting the following:

    • Use of a common bus by all devices.
    • The serial communication protocol used by SAS allows for fewer signal lines to be used.
    • There is no need for bus termination.
    • Virtually unlimited number of connected devices.
    • Higher throughput (up to 12 Gbit/s). Future implementations of the SAS protocol are expected to support data transfer rates of up to 24 Gbit/s.
    • Possibility of connecting drives with Serial ATA interface to the SAS controller.

    As a rule, Serial Attached SCSI systems are built on the basis of several components. The main components include:

    • Target devices. This category includes the actual drives or disk arrays.
    • Initiators are chips designed to generate requests to target devices.
    • Data delivery system - cables connecting target devices and initiators

    Serial Attached SCSI connectors come in different shapes and sizes, depending on the type (external or internal) and SAS versions. Below are the SFF-8482 internal connector and the SFF-8644 external connector designed for SAS-3:

    On the left is an internal SAS connector SFF-8482; On the right is an external SAS SFF-8644 connector with a cable.

    A few examples of the appearance of SAS cords and adapters: HD-Mini SAS cord and SAS-Serial ATA adapter cord.

    On the left is the HD Mini SAS cable; On the right is an adapter cable from SAS to Serial ATA.

    Firewire - IEEE 1394

    Today you can often find hard drives with a Firewire interface. Although the Firewire interface can connect any type of peripheral devices to a computer, and it is not a specialized interface designed exclusively for connecting hard drives, Firewire nevertheless has a number of features that make it extremely convenient for this purpose.

    FireWire - IEEE 1394 - view on a laptop

    The Firewire interface was developed in the mid-1990s. The development began with the well-known company Apple, which needed its own bus, different from USB, for connecting peripheral equipment, primarily multimedia. The specification describing the operation of the Firewire bus is called IEEE 1394.

    Firewire is one of the most commonly used high-speed serial external bus formats today. The main features of the standard include:

    • Possibility of hot connection of devices.
    • Open bus architecture.
    • Flexible topology for connecting devices.
    • Data transfer speeds vary widely – from 100 to 3200 Mbit/s.
    • The ability to transfer data between devices without a computer.
    • Possibility of organizing local networks using a bus.
    • Power transmission via bus.
    • A large number of connected devices (up to 63).

    To connect hard drives (usually via external hard drive enclosures) via the Firewire bus, as a rule, a special SBP-2 standard is used, which uses the Small Computers System Interface protocol command set. It is possible to connect Firewire devices to a regular USB connector, but this requires a special adapter.

    IDE - Integrated Drive Electronics

    The abbreviation IDE is undoubtedly known to most personal computer users. The interface standard for connecting IDE hard drives was developed by a well-known hard drive manufacturer - Western Digital. The advantage of IDE over other interfaces that existed at the time, in particular the Small Computers System Interface, as well as the ST-506 standard, was that there was no need to install a hard drive controller on the motherboard. The IDE standard implied installing a drive controller on the drive itself, and only a host interface adapter for connecting IDE drives remained on the motherboard.

    IDE interface on motherboard

    This innovation has improved the operating parameters of the IDE drive due to the fact that the distance between the controller and the drive itself has been reduced. In addition, installing an IDE controller inside the hard drive case made it possible to somewhat simplify both motherboards and the production of hard drives themselves, since the technology gave freedom to manufacturers in terms of optimal organization of the logic of the drive.

    The new technology was initially called Integrated Drive Electronics. Subsequently, a standard was developed to describe it, called ATA. This name is derived from the last part of the name of the PC/AT family of computers by adding the word Attachment.

    An IDE cable is used to connect a hard drive or other device, such as an optical drive that supports Integrated Drive Electronics technology, to the motherboard. Since ATA refers to parallel interfaces (therefore it is also called Parallel ATA or PATA), that is, interfaces that provide for simultaneous data transmission over several lines, its data cable has a large number of conductors (usually 40, and in recent versions of the protocol it was possible to use 80-core cable). A typical data cable for this standard is flat and wide, but round cables are also available. The power cable for Parallel ATA drives has a 4-pin connector and is connected to the computer's power supply.

    Below are examples of IDE cable and round PATA data cable:

    Appearance of the interface cable: on the left - flat, on the right in a round braid - PATA or IDE.

    Thanks to the comparative low cost of Parallel ATA drives, the ease of implementation of the interface on the motherboard, as well as the ease of installation and configuration of PATA devices for the user, Integrated Drive Electronics type drives have for a long time pushed out devices of other interface types from the market of hard drives for budget-level personal computers.

    However, the PATA standard also has a number of disadvantages. First of all, this is a limitation on the length that a Parallel ATA data cable can have - no more than 0.5 m. In addition, the parallel organization of the interface imposes a number of restrictions on the maximum data transfer speed. It does not support the PATA standard and many of the advanced features that other types of interfaces have, such as hot plugging of devices.

    SATA - Serial ATA

    View of the SATA interface on the motherboard

    The SATA (Serial ATA) interface, as the name suggests, is an improvement over ATA. This improvement consists, first of all, in converting the traditional parallel ATA (Parallel ATA) into a serial interface. However, the differences between the Serial ATA standard and the traditional one are not limited to this. In addition to changing the data transmission type from parallel to serial, the data and power connectors also changed.

    Below is the SATA data cable:

    Data cable for SATA interface

    This made it possible to use a much longer cord and increase the data transfer speed. However, the downside was the fact that PATA devices, which were present on the market in huge quantities before the advent of SATA, became impossible to connect directly to the new connectors. True, most new motherboards still have old connectors and support connecting older devices. However, the reverse operation - connecting a new type of drive to an old motherboard usually causes much more problems. For this operation, the user usually requires a Serial ATA to PATA adapter. The power cable adapter usually has a relatively simple design.

    Serial ATA to PATA power adapter:

    On the left is a general view of the cable; On the right is an enlarged view of the PATA and Serial ATA connectors

    However, the situation is more complicated with a device such as an adapter for connecting a serial interface device to a parallel interface connector. Typically, an adapter of this type is made in the form of a small microcircuit.

    Appearance of a universal bidirectional adapter between SATA - IDE interfaces

    Currently, the Serial ATA interface has practically replaced Parallel ATA, and PATA drives can now be found mainly only in fairly old computers. Another feature of the new standard that ensured its wide popularity was support.

    Type of adapter from IDE to SATA

    You can tell us a little more about NCQ technology. The main advantage of NCQ is that it allows you to use ideas that have long been implemented in the SCSI protocol. In particular, NCQ supports a system for sequencing read/write operations across multiple drives installed in a system. Thus, NCQ can significantly improve the performance of drives, especially hard drive arrays.

    Type of adapter from SATA to IDE

    To use NCQ, technology support is required on the hard drive side, as well as on the motherboard host adapter. Almost all adapters that support AHCI also support NCQ. In addition, some older proprietary adapters also support NCQ. Also, for NCQ to work, it requires support from the operating system.

    eSATA - External SATA

    It is worth mentioning separately the eSATA (External SATA) format, which seemed promising at the time, but never became widespread. As you can guess from the name, eSATA is a type of Serial ATA designed for connecting exclusively external drives. The eSATA standard offers most of the capabilities of the standard for external devices, i.e. internal Serial ATA, in particular, the same system of signals and commands and the same high speed.

    eSATA connector on a laptop

    However, eSATA also has some differences from the internal bus standard that gave birth to it. In particular, eSATA supports a longer data cable (up to 2 m) and also has higher power requirements for drives. Additionally, eSATA connectors are slightly different from standard Serial ATA connectors.

    Compared to other external buses, such as USB and Firewire, eSATA, however, has one significant drawback. While these buses allow the device to be powered via the bus cable itself, the eSATA drive requires special connectors for power. Therefore, despite the relatively high data transfer speed, eSATA is currently not very popular as an interface for connecting external drives.

    Conclusion

    Information stored on a hard drive cannot be useful to the user or accessible to application programs until it is accessed by the computer's central processing unit. Hard drive interfaces provide a means of communication between these drives and the motherboard. Today, there are many different types of hard drive interfaces, each of which has its own advantages, disadvantages and characteristic features. We hope that the information provided in this article will be largely useful to the reader, because the choice of a modern hard drive is largely determined not only by its internal characteristics, such as capacity, cache memory, access and rotation speed, but also by the interface for which it was developed.

    How to determine whether a hard drive is connected to a SATA II or a SATA III port on the motherboard? One way to do this is to open the system unit or laptop case and see if the motherboard supports the SATA III (6 Gbps) interface.

    Then look at the inscription at the port to which the information loop from the hard drive leads. In our case, the HDD is connected to the SATA III connector; on the motherboard it is labeled SATA 6G.

    SATA II connector (3 Gbps) is marked SATA 3G

    Thus, if the motherboard supports the third version of the data exchange interface, but for some reason the connection is currently going through version two, you can immediately reconnect. But this method is not always suitable. For example, in the case of laptops, which require special care when disassembling. Or when the PC is under warranty and its case is sealed by the collecting office.

    An option to cope with this task without disassembling the case is to find the specifications of the motherboard and storage medium on the Internet. However, the answer to the question in this case can be obtained if at least one of the devices does not support the SATA III interface. Then it is obvious that the connection is made via the SATA II interface. If there is a possibility that both the motherboard and the hard drive can operate in the third version of the interface, then specialized Windows programs will help you to lose faith in this or, conversely, to finally be convinced, and also to understand whether the computer’s power potential is idle. Such programs can determine which versions of SATA ports are supported by devices, as well as which of them the storage media is currently connected to. Let's look at two of these programs.

    1. HWINFO

    The free HWINFO program is one of the most successful in terms of interface usability and functionality for analyzing computer device components. It provides a complete picture of information about the hardware, measures temperature, provides the ability to test computer performance, etc. The lack of multilingual support (in particular, Russian) is perhaps the only drawback of this program. However, this will not prevent us from finding out information within the framework of the issue raised in the article.

    Launch HWINFO. First of all, we can look at the characteristics of the motherboard. In the panel on the left, open the “Motherboard” branch and on the right side of the window we see that the computer under test has support for SATA III - these are two ports labeled “6 Gb/s”.

    We can find out which SATA port a specific SSD or HDD is currently connected to by opening the “Drives” branch. Here we will see all disk devices. Select the media we are interested in and switch to the panel on the right. The “Drive Controller” column will display information about the connection interfaces - those supported by the carrier itself and through which the connection is actually made. The screenshot below shows an example of connecting an SSD via SATA II. The first part of the “Serial ATA 6Gb/s” column (before the “@” sign) indicates that the drive has a SATA III interface. And the second part of the value of the “3 Gb/s” column states that the SSD is currently operates at reduced SATA II speed.

    But in another case, we see an ideal picture - “6 Gb/s” is displayed in both the first and second parts of the value. This means that the SSD has a SATA III interface andconnected to the third version of the interface, that is, it uses its potential to the maximum.

    2.CrystalDiskInfo

    The small utility CrystalDiskInfo is another free way to find out about the SATA version supported by the hard drive and through which the connection is actually made. Using CrystalDiskInfo, we will not obtain information on any other computer components except storage media – SSD and HDD. Among the displayed parameters in the program window, we need the “Transmission mode” column. Two values ​​will be displayed here, separated by a vertical bar: the first is the actual interface version mode, the second is the mode potentially supported by the hard drive. In the screenshot below we see that in the “Transmission mode” column it is indicated “SATA/300 | SATA 600", which means that the SSD is connected via the SATA II interface, but can operate in SATA III mode.

    In a situation with another computer and another SSD, the “Transfer mode” column contains the values ​​“SATA/600 | SATA 600". This suggests that both the current version of the drive connection interface and the one it potentially supports are the same, third. By the way, if there are several hard drives on board the computer, you can view information on each of them by switching between the temperature widgets at the top.

    Many computer users have come across the word SATA more than once, but not many know what it is. Should you pay attention to it when choosing a hard drive, system board or a ready-made computer? After all, the word SATA is now often mentioned in the characteristics of these devices.

    We give a definition

    SATA is a serial data transfer interface between various storage devices, which replaced the parallel ATA interface.

    Work on creating this interface began in 2000.

    In February 2000, on the initiative of Intel, a special working group was created, which included the leaders of IT technologies of those times and today: Dell, Maxtor, Seagate, APT Technologies, Quantum and many other equally significant companies.

    As a result of two years of collaboration, the first SATA connectors appeared on motherboards at the end of 2002. They were used to transmit data through network devices.

    And since 2003, the serial interface has been integrated into all modern motherboards.

    To visually feel the difference between ATA and SATA, look at the photo below.

    Serial ATA interface.

    The new interface at the software level is compatible with all existing hardware devices and provides higher data transfer rates.

    As you can see from the photo above, the 7-pin wire is thinner, which provides a more convenient connection between various devices, and also allows you to increase the number of Serial ATA connectors on the motherboard.

    In some motherboard models, their number can reach as many as 6.

    Lower operating voltage, fewer contacts and microcircuits have reduced the heat generation of devices. Therefore, SATA port controllers do not overheat, which ensures even more reliable data transfer.

    However, it is still problematic to connect most modern disk drives to the Serial ATA interface, so all manufacturers of modern motherboards have not yet abandoned the ATA (IDE) interface.

    Cables and connectors

    For full data transfer via the SATA interface, two cables are used.

    One, 7-pin, directly for data transmission, and the second, 15-pin, power, for supplying additional voltage.

    At the same time, the 15-pin power cable is connected to the power supply, through a regular 4-pin connector that produces two different voltages, 5 and 12 V.

    The SATA power cable produces operating voltages of 3.3, 5 and 12 V, with a current of 4.5 A.

    Cable width 2.4 cm.

    To ensure a smooth transition from ATA to SATA in terms of power connections, you can still see the old 4-pin connectors on some hard drive models.

    But as a rule, modern hard drives already come with only a new 15-pin connector.

    The Serial ATA data cable can be connected to the hard drive and motherboard even when the latter are turned on, which could not be done with the old ATA interface.

    This is achieved due to the fact that the grounding pins in the area of ​​the interface contacts are made slightly longer than the signal and power pins.

    Therefore, when connecting, the ground wires come into contact first, and only then all the others.

    The same can be said about the 15-pin power cable.


    Table, Serial ATA power connector.

    SATA Configuration

    The main difference between the SATA and ATA configurations is the absence of special switches and Master/Slave type chips.

    There is also no need to choose where to connect the device to the cable, because there are two such places on the ATA cable, and the device that is connected at the end of the cable is considered the main one in the BIOS.

    The absence of Master/Slave settings not only greatly simplifies the hardware configuration, but also allows for faster installation of operating systems, for example.

    Speaking of BIOS, settings in it won’t take much time either. You can quickly find and configure everything there.

    Data transfer rate

    Data transfer speed is one of the important parameters, for the improvement of which the SATA interface was developed.

    But this figure in this interface has constantly increased and now the data transfer speed can reach up to 1969 MB/s. Much depends on the generation of the SATA interface, and there are already 5 of them.

    The first generations of the serial interface, version “0,” could transfer up to 50 MB/s, but they did not catch on, as they were immediately replaced by SATA 1.0. the data transfer speed of which already reached 150 MB/s.

    The appearance of SATA series and their capabilities.

    Series:

    1. 1.0 – debut time 01/7/2003 – maximum theoretical data transfer speed 150 MB/s.
    2. 2.0 – will appear in 2004, fully compatible with version 1.0, maximum theoretical data transfer speed of 300 MB/s or 3 Gbit/s.
    3. 3.0 – debut time July 2008, start of release May 2009. Theoretical maximum speed is 600 MB/s or 6 Gb/s.
    4. 3.1 – debut time July 2011, speed – 600 MB/s or 6 Gbit/s. A more improved version than in paragraph 3.
    5. 3.2, as well as the SATA Express specification included in it - released in 2013. In this version, SATA and PCIe devices merged. Data transfer speed has increased to 1969 MB/s.

    In this interface, data transfer is carried out at a speed of 16 Gbit/s or 1969 MB/s due to the interaction of two PCIe Express and SATA lines.

    The SATA Express interface began to be implemented in Intel 9-series chipsets and at the beginning of 2014 was still little known.

    If they are not introduced into the jungle of IT technologies, then in a nutshell we can say this.

    Serial ATA Express is a kind of transition bridge that converts the usual signal transmission mode in SATA mode to a higher speed one, which is possible thanks to the PCI Express interface.

    eSATA

    eSATA is used to connect external devices, which once again confirms the versatility of the SATA interface.

    More reliable connection connectors and ports are already used here.

    The disadvantage is that the external device requires a separate dedicated cable to operate.

    But the interface developers soon solved this problem by introducing the power supply directly into the main cable in the eSATAp interface.

    eSATAp is a modified eSATA interface in the implementation of which USB 2.0 technology was used. The main advantage of this interface is the transmission of 5 and 12 Volt voltages via wires.

    Accordingly, eSATAp 5 V and eSATAp 12 V are found.

    There are other names for the interface, it all depends on the manufacturer. You may come across similar names: Power eSATA, Power over eSATA, eSATA USB Hybrid Port (EUHP), eSATApd and SATA/USB Combo.

    See below for what the interface looks like.

    The Mini eSATAp interface has also been developed for laptops and netbooks.

    mSATA

    mSATA – implemented since September 2009. Designed for use in laptops, netbooks and other small PCs.

    The photo above, as an example, shows two drives, one regular SATA, it’s at the bottom. Above is a disk with an mSATA interface.

    For those interested, you can familiarize yourself with the characteristics of mSATA drives.

    Such drives are installed in almost every ultrabook.

    The mSATA interface is rarely used in ordinary computers.

    mSATA to Serial ATA Converter Adapter.

    Conclusion

    From the above it is clear that the SATA serial data transfer interface has not yet completely exhausted itself.

    Hello dear friends! Artem Yushchenko is with you.

    SATA1 standard – has a transfer speed of up to 150Mb/s
    SATA2 standard – has a transfer speed of up to 300Mb/s
    SATA3 standard – has a transfer speed of up to 600Mb/s
    I am often asked why, when I test the speed of my drive (and the drive, for example, has a SATA2 interface and the motherboard has a port of the same standard), the speed is far from 300MB/s and not more.

    In fact, the disk speed even of the SATA1 standard does not exceed 75MB/s. Its speed is usually limited by mechanical parts. Such as the spindle speed (7200 per minute for home computers), and also the number of platters in the disk. The more there are, the longer the delays in writing and reading data will be.

    Therefore, in essence, no matter what interface of a traditional hard drive you use, the speed will not exceed 85 MB/s.

    However, I do not recommend using IDE standard drives in modern computers because they are already quite slower than SATA2. This will affect the performance of writing and reading data, which means there will be discomfort when working with large amounts of data.
    Recently, a new SATA3 standard has appeared, which will be relevant for disks based on solid-state memory. We will talk about them later.
    However, one thing is clear: modern traditional SATA drives, due to their mechanical limitations, have not even developed the SATA1 standard yet, but SATA3 has already appeared. That is, the port provides speed but not disk.
    However, each new SATA standard still brings some improvements, and with large volumes of information they will make themselves felt in good quality.

    For example, the function is constantly being improved - Native Command Queuing (NCQ), a special command that allows you to parallelize read-write commands, for greater performance than the SATA1 and IDE interfaces cannot boast of.
    The most remarkable thing is that the SATA standard, or rather its versions, are compatible with each other, which gives us monetary savings. That is, for example, a SATA1 drive can be connected to a motherboard with a SATA2 and SATA3 connector and vice versa.
    Not long ago, the market for new storage devices, the so-called SSDs, began to develop (let me remind you that traditional hard drives are designated as HDD).

    SSD is nothing more than flash memory (not to be confused with flash drives, SSD is tens of times faster than regular flash drives). These drives are quiet, heat up little and consume little energy. They support read speeds up to 270MB/s and write speeds up to 250-260MB/s. However they are very expensive. A 256 GB disk can cost up to 30,000 rubles. However, prices will gradually fall as the flash memory market develops.
    However, the prospect of buying an SSD, for example 64GB, is very pleasant, because it works much faster than a regular disk on magnetic platters, which means you can install a system on it and get an increase in performance when loading the operating system and when working with a computer. Such a disc costs about 5–6 thousand rubles. I'm thinking about buying this myself.

    These drives fully exploit the SATA2 standards and they need the new SATA 3 interface like air than traditional drives. In the next six months, SSD drives will move to the SATA3 standard and will be able to demonstrate speeds of up to 560 MB/s in read operations.
    Not long ago, I came across an IDE disk with a size of 40GB and was released more than 7 years ago (not mine, they gave it to me for repairs). I tested its speed characteristics and compared them with the SATA1 and SATA2 standards, since I myself have both SATA disks standards.

    The measurements were carried out using the Crystal Disk Mark program, several versions. I found out that the accuracy of measurements from one version of the program to another is practically independent. The computer has a 32-bit operating system Windows 7 Maximum and a Pentium 4 - 3 GHz processor. Tests were also carried out on a processor with two Core 2 Duo E7500 cores overclocked to a clock frequency of 3.53 GHz. (standard frequency 2.93 GHz). According to my observations, the speed of reading and writing data is not affected by the processor speed.

    This is what a good old IDE disk looks like; disks of this standard are still sold.

    This is how an IDE drive is connected. Wide cable for data transmission. Narrow white – nutrition.

    And this is what connecting SATA drives looks like – red data wires. And also in the photo you can see the IDE cable that connects to its connector.

    Speed ​​results:

    IDE standard speed. It is equal to 41 MB for writing and the same amount for reading data. Next come lines on reading sectors of various sizes in a variety of sizes.

    Read and write speed SATA1. 50 and 49 MB for read and write speeds, respectively.

    Read and write speed for SATA2. 75 and 74 MB for reading and writing, respectively.

    And lastly, I’ll show you the results of testing one of the 4 GB flash drives from the excellent company Transcend. For flash memory the result is not bad:

    Conclusion: The SATA1 and SATA2 interfaces (which took first place in the test results) are most preferable for use in a desktop home computer.

    Sincerely, Artyom Yushchenko.

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