PC Hardware in a Nutshell, 3rd Edition

Configuring SATA devices

There’s simply not much to say about configuring SATA devices. Unlike with PATA, with SATA you needn’t set jumpers for Master or Slave (although SATA does support Master/Slave emulation). Each SATA device connects to a dedicated signal connector, and the signal and power cables are completely standard. Nor do you have to worry about configuring DMA, deciding which devices should share a channel, and so on. There are no concerns about capacity limits because all SATA devices and interfaces support 48-bit LBA. The BIOS, operating system, and drivers all recognize an SATA drive as just another ATA drive, so there’s no configuration needed. You simply connect the signal cable to the drive and interface, connect the power cable to the drive, and start using the drive. Everything should be that simple.