What is Serial ATA?
[[File:SATA ports.jpg|thumb|Standard SATA plug (above); connectors on the motherboard (red, below).]] [[File:Serial ATA hard disk connected.jpg|thumb|A harddisk with Serial ATA connected. The red cable on the left is the data cable, the one on the right supplies power.]] '''Serial ATA''' ('''SATA''' or '''Serial Advanced Technology Attachment''') is a standard that has been defined to connect storage devices or optical drives to a [[computer]]. The most common standard that was used beforehand was called ATA or IDE; it has been renamed [[PATA]]. The main difference between the two lies in the cables: SATA cables have seven wires, PATA cables have 40 or 80. Another difference is that with SATA, there is one cable for each device, while with PATA, all devices are connected to the same cable. As of 2022, almost all desktop computers have a SATA interface. [[PATA]] is very rare nowadays, but some old computers still use it. Computers that still use PATA are mostly used for industrial applications and [[embedded system]]s. Some computers (mostly laptops) do not have a SATA interface. They have an [[M.2]] NVME interface to connect NVME SSDs which are based on the PCIE standard. Some laptops also have an embedded [[flash memory]]. SATA will most likely disappear from laptops (and some computers) in the future and be replaced with M.2 NVME SSDs. == Technology and transfer speeds == [[File:Atacables.jpg|thumb|Cables used to connect drives: On top, PATA, 80 wires, in the middle, PATA 40 wires, below (blue) SATA]] Electric signals transmitted on a parallel bus made of several wires will influence each other, if the transfer speed is increased. This phenomenon is known as [[crosstalk]]. Another problem with PATA is that the termination of the bus is not specified. Serial ATA uses low-voltage differential signaling, which avoids most of these problems. Serial ATA uses 8B/10B encoding. This means that 10 bits are used to transfer 8 bits. The first standard of SATA used 1.5 GBit/second transfer speed (or 1.2 GBit/second usabl