SATA HDDs
In 2002, Seagate released an HDD technology called SATA (an acronym for Serial Advanced Technology Attachment), which used serial transmission instead of slower parallel transmission. Whereas PATA drives speeds of 33/66/133 Mbps, SATA drives boasted speeds of 150/300/600 Mbps. This meant that the lowest SATA transmission speed of 150 Mbps was faster than the highest PATA speed of 133 Mbps.
The connector interfaces of the SATA drives were also different, but it was common at the time to see SATA drives with connectors for both SATA and PATA power cables for backward compatibility.
SATA data cables are much thinner than PATA cables, as they only contain seven wires connecting to seven pins. SATA devices use one cable per drive, unlike ...
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