SATA III is the most common SATA interface used today, though there have been five revisions since its introduction, namely 3.1 through 3.5. These standards increased speed and added additional features to allow for faster and more reliable storage drives, but didn’t change the physical look of the SATA connector itself. It was revised in 2003 and again in 20, bringing SATA to version three, commonly referred to as SATA III or 3.0. SATA was first introduced in 2000, replacing the aged PATA ribbon cables. SATA generations A SATA data cable BlickPixel/PixabayĪlthough most PCs in recent years have used SATA devices, there are a few different types that are worth noting. The data cable provides the high-speed connection to the rest of the computer, transferring information back and forth as requested, while the power cable is what gives the drive the electricity to run in the first place.
Where the SATA data cable is usually made up of solid plastic, which extends into a flat, single-band cable, the SATA power connector will continue from its head to multiple, thin, rounded wires of different colors.īoth cables are required for SATA devices to work, and both do different jobs. Beyond length, they can be told apart by the cables that connect to them. The former is the short, L-shaped, seven-pin connector, while the latter is the more extended 15-pin connector - the taller “L” of the two.īoth connectors are typically reversed on the drives they allow connections for, with the bases of their respective “L” shapes facing one another. In other words, your PC connects through two SATA ports, one on the drive and another on the motherboard.Īlthough SATA connectors are described as a single port or connector, SATA encompasses two ports: The data connector and the power connector. Data and powerĪlthough there is a myriad of computer products that are designated as SATA devices, the reason they are called that is that they use the SATA interface. That may be a little confusing so read on to learn more about SATA, and don’t forget to check out our guide to what SSDs are, as well as our guide on some of the best SSDs available today. But alongside PCIe and NVMe, SATA is still a significant player, especially when it comes to larger-sized HDDs and SSDs.
That’s not always the case, as there are some newer standards available for high-speed drives. What is SATA? In short, it’s how almost everything storage-related connects to your motherboard. Whether it was a hard drive (HDD), a solid-state drive (SSD), or an optical drive, almost all of them used SATA until recently. If you’ve owned a desktop PC or laptop in the past decade and a half, you can be confident it was a Serial ATA (SATA) compatible piece of hardware.
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