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SATA Full Form

What Is The Full Form Of SATA?

The full form of SATA is Serial Advanced Technology Attachment.

SATA or Serial ATA is an interface used for connecting various devices like SSDs, hard disks, optical devices, and more with the motherboard. This interface was originally introduced to replace the Parallel ATA (PATA). As we already know, data transfers bit by bit in the series mode and several streams carry it in the parallel one. Despite this, PATA holds a drawback. It is highly susceptible to interference from outside. But SATA operates at a higher speed compared to PATA. The cables are more flexible, thinner, and more compact compared to the PATA cables.

History of SATA

  • Several industry groups began their developments in SATA in the late 2000s.
  • In the year 2003, the SATA International Organization (SATA-IO) originated. It laid out the first-ever specifications of SATA.

Modes of SATA

The SATA interface operates on two modes:

  • AHCI Mode – AHCI stands for Advanced Host Controller Interface. This mode is a high-performance one, and it also provides support toward hot-swapping.
  • IDE Mode – IDE is an abbreviation for Integrated Drive Electronics. This mode functions to provide backward compatibility among older hardware that runs on PATA but at a low-performance cost.

Characteristics of SATA

  • Uncomplicated construction – The SATA has a 15 pin power cable and a single 7 pin data cable. It was better compared to PATA cables. These had 40-pin/80-wire ribbon cable, which was complex in construction. As a result, the SATA cable exhibited a higher signaling rate. It ultimately translates to faster data throughput.
  • Low Voltage Requirement – SATA interface operates on 0.5V (500mV) peak-to-peak signaling. It helps a user promote much lower crosstalk and interference between the conductors.
  • High rate of data transfer – SATA transfers data at a higher rate of 600/300/150 Mbs per second. Since it exhibits such a capability, it allows better picture loading, faster program loading, and quicker document loading.
  • Differential Signaling – The signaling that goes along with SATA is differential. Differential signaling uses two adjacent wires for simultaneously transmitting the out-of-phase and in-phase signals. It makes the transfer of high-speed data possible with comparatively lower operating voltage and lesser power consumption. It detects the difference in phase between these two signals at the receiver’s end.

Advantages of SATA

  • It transfers data faster than that of PATA.
  • The cables of SATA are smaller in size.
  • Every SATA cable can be up to 1 meter in length, while the PATA cables can only have a maximum length of 18 inches.
  • The power consumption of SATA is low (0.5V).
  • A majority of motherboards from modern computers have SATA ports instead of PATA ports today.
  • SATA is comparatively smaller in size. Thus, it takes up lesser space inside a computer and also increases the airflow. The increase in airflow decreases the build-up of heat- leading to an increase of the overall computer life.

Disadvantages of SATA

  • Sometimes, a user might require special device drivers for recognition and usage of the SATA drive. But SATA and PATA hard drives can behave just alike. In such cases, one might not need to install a specific driver.
  • SATA cables support the connection of only one hard drive at a time. On the contrary, PATA allows the connection of two drives at the same time.
  • SATA falls into a costlier spectrum as compared to PATA.

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