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ATA Hard Disk vs SATA Hard Disk: Pick your Choice!Here is the Match between ATA Hard Disk vs SATA Hard Disk, There is an increasing performance within the computer systems as faster processors, memory, and video cards are developed nowadays. Especially the improvement in the performance of a hard drive. Manufacturers have developed rapidly in making Hard Drive with faster spindle speeds, larger caches, better reliability, and increased data transmission speeds. With data rates hitting the 133MB/sec mark on a parallel cable, there are problems arise due to signal timing, EMI (electromagnetic interference) and other data integrity issues; thus Hard Disk Manufacturers got together and came up with a new standard known as Serial ATA (SATA). SATA has only been around a few years, but is destined to become “the standard” due to several benefits. ATA devices are also known as IDE, EIDE, Ultra-ATA, Ultra-DMA, ATAPI, PATA, etc. (each of these acronyms actually do refer to very specific items, but are commonly interchanged) SATA (Serial Advanced Technology Attachment) – a 1-bit serial evolution of the Parallel ATA physical storage interface. ATA Hard disk vs SATA Hard Disk: Features & Connections
SATA hard disk can be easily differentiated from the ATA hard disk by the different data and power connections found on the back of the drives. A side-by-side comparison of the two interfaces can be seen in the documents provided by the manufacturer of the Hard disk, and the following covers many of the differences. Standard ATA hard drives are bulky, two inch wide ribbon cable with 40-pin data connections and receive the 5V necessary to power them from the familiar 4-pin connection. The basic data cables for these drives have not changed for years. A change was made with the introduction of the ATA-5 standard to better improve the signal quality by making an 80 wire cable used on the 40-pin connector (these are commonly called 40-pin/80-wire cables). To improve airflow within the computer system some manufacturers resorted to literally folding over the ribbon cable and taping it into that position. Another recent physical change also came with the advent of rounded cables. The performance of the rounded cables is equal to that of the flat ribbon, but many prefer the improved system air flow afforded, ease of wire management, and cooler appearance that come with them. SATA hard drives have a half inch wide, 7 “blade and beam” data connection, which results in a much thinner and easier to manage data cable. These cables take the convenience of the ATA rounded cables to the next level by being even narrower, more flexible and capable of being longer without fear of data loss. SATA cables have a maximum length of 1 meter (39.37 inches), which is much greater than the recommended 18 inch cable for ATA drives. The reduced footprint of SATA data connections frees up space on motherboards, potentially allowing for more convenient layouts and room for more onboard features! A 15-pin power connection delivers the 250mV of necessary power to SATA drives. 15-pins for a SATA device sounds like it would require a much larger power cable than a 4-pin ATA device, but in reality the two power connectors are just about the same height. For the time being, many SATA drives are also coming with a legacy 4-pin power connector for convenience. Many modern motherboards nowadays come with SATA drive connections onboard (many also including the ATA connectors as well for legacy drive compatibility), and new power supplies feature a few of the necessary 15-pin power connections, making it easy to use these drives on new systems. Older systems can easily be upgraded to support SATA drives by use of adapters, such as this PCI slot SATA controller and this 4-pin to 15-pin SATA power adapter. Optical drives are also becoming more readily available with SATA connections. They take the advantage of the new interface, although the performance will not be any greater than a comparable optical drive with an ATA connection. ATA Hard Disk vs SATA Hard Disk: Performance In addition to being more convenient to install and drawing less power, SATA Hard drives are much more convenient to install and draw less power, it also have great performance compare to ATA Hard drives. SATA Hard drive can perform the maximum bandwidth possible. Since ATA Hard drives can transfer data at a rate reaching 133 MB/second, the present SATA Hard Drive enable data transfers of up to 150 MB/second. The overall performance increase of SATA over ATA can currently be expected to be up to 5%. SATA hard drives also have a built-in hot-swap capabilities. SATA drives can be brought on and offline without shutting down the computer system, this is especially for those who want to move drives in and out of operation quickly. SATA Hard disk will cost just a bit more than an ATA hard drive. SATA Hard drives is gaining more popularity. The price gap is getting closer an it is espected that SATA Hard disk or Hard drive may become the main standard for Hard drive in today's computer system. The Result from ATA Hard Disk vs SATA Hard Disk The current SATA standard provides more benefits over ATA in terms of convenience, power consumption and, most importantly, performance. Even though ATA Hard Disk are still in use widely. It is clear here that the winner of the Match between ATA Hard Disk vs SATA Hard Disk is the SATA Hard Disk or hard drive. The future of SATA will be even more interesting as speed increases will help hard drive development keep pace with the system components in your computer. Return to Selecting a Hard Drive from ATA Hard Disk vs SATA Hard Disk
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