Whats the difference between SATA hard disks and ATA hard disks?

India
February 15, 2007 6:37am CST
I've always had this doubt before cuz all the new PC come with SATA hard disks.Does anyone know?
2 people like this
5 responses
@shilpaum (1752)
• India
15 Feb 07
Serial ATA (SATA) hard disks have.... *Thine and wide power cable *Smaller data cable..as compared to ATA/IDE hard disks.
@shilpaum (1752)
• India
15 Feb 07
Sorry spelling mistake...thine=thin.
2 people like this
• India
15 Feb 07
yes i'm aware of all what you said but still why the migration.BTW i never expected you, a biotechnologist to answer this.LOL.
2 people like this
@shilpaum (1752)
• India
15 Feb 07
Actually, I'm taking interst in computers too,due to my husbd. He keeps me informing about many things, & frequently checks what i got. He taught me how to format hard disk, partition & all. But...I got little..lol. This one I was knowing I though only the size of cable cannot be a major difference, but from search i got that only.
2 people like this
@koh2007 (341)
• Singapore
15 Feb 07
hmm.. the different?? Sata start with S while Ata start with A.. :) cheers!!
2 people like this
• India
15 Feb 07
yeah right!
2 people like this
• India
16 Feb 07
Serial ATA is an evolutionary replacement for the Parallel ATA physical storage interface. The Serial ATA International Organization (SATA-IO) is the group responsible for developing, managing and driving adoption of the Serial ATA specifications. Users of the Serial ATA interface benefit from greater speed, simpler upgradeable storage devices and easier configuration
1 person likes this
• India
16 Feb 07
but how can serial hardisks be faster that parallel ones.I mean parrell stuff are meant to be more faster.
1 person likes this
• India
15 Feb 07
SATA is serial ATA and ATA is only Advance Technology Attachment, the difference is between speeds of both the Hard disk drives, SATA is having a higher rate of speed, it is around 72000 RPM and ATA is only between 24000-36000 RPM, where as RPM stands for Revolutions Per Second. The rate at which data is fetched from the sata is much higher and that is the reason why if you have sata disk then faster the file calling procedure, other basic difference is the chord SATA will be having a small chord and ATA will be having the standard cord.It is adivisable to have a SATA disk rather than ATA because of its durability also, sata is having good durability and crash proof also. these are the most important differnces between the disks.
1 person likes this
• India
16 Feb 07
i have a ATA hard disk and it has an rpm of 7200.What have you got to say for that?
1 person likes this
• India
25 Feb 07
In computer hardware , Serial ATA(SATA) is a computer bus technology primarily desinged for transfer of data to and from a hard disk and an optical drive.It was designed as a successor to the legacy Advanced Technology Attachment standard(ATA). Serial ATA adapters and devices communicate over a high-speed serial link.At the physical layer , the data-connection is formed by two pairs of (unidirectional) signal wires.Over these wires , SATA uses LVDS differential signalling , enabling much higher(per-wire) signalling rates (1.5Gbps and up) than traditional parallel ATA. I guess this info is enough for u . and the above last statement answers why serial transmission is faster than parallel transmission. which student r u ? I mean if u r a student what do u study and if u r working then what work and what's ur background .I am asking this because if u still wanna know deep abt SATA AND ATA u need to have knowledge of some things in computer science. I hope my reply helps u :)
• India
26 Feb 07
Thx a lot buddy!It really helped me.So its the encoding that makes it faster. I'm a computer science student engineer BTW.Thanks again.
1 person likes this
• India
16 Mar 07
Thanks for responding.Not sure how far thats true.
• India
16 Mar 07
it is not the coding that makes serial transmission fast. in parallel transmission all the wores are close together. so as we try to go higher frequncy for faster speeds of transmission magnetic interfarence starts to create problem. so an upper limit to usable frequency is set. but in serial transmission only two (unidirectional) wires are used. hence there is no problem of magnetic interfarence. therefore we can go much higher in frequency without any problem. this makes achieving higher transmission rates possible. thats why serial transmission is faster over parallel