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Home > Archive > Data Storage > November 2004 > Disk Technologies ATA, SATA & SAS
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Disk Technologies ATA, SATA & SAS
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| Shivakanth Mundru 2004-11-15, 8:45 pm |
| Can some one point me to a good resource that point out the
differences amonng the disk technologies?
(or)
good brief resources for each of these (ATA,SATA,SAS)
Thanks a lot,
S
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| Nik Simpson 2004-11-16, 7:45 am |
| Shivakanth Mundru wrote:
> Can some one point me to a good resource that point out the
> differences amonng the disk technologies?
>
> (or)
ATA is basically the same spec that has been used for PC disk drives since
the 80s when it started out as IDE. Over that time its gone through a number
of evolutions to improve performance and support bigger drives. The ATA
interface is a parralel I/F, i.e. you have a wide ribbon cable with 40 wires
with data & commands transmitted as a set of synchronized bits over the
wires in the I/F.
SATA is a further evolution of the ATA spec and changes the interface from
the clunky old ribbon cable with 40 wires in parralel to a serial interface
where a 32 bit word would be transmitted as a sequence of bits down a single
connector. There are lots of reasons for changing from the old parralel I/F
to a serial I/F including:
1. Higher speeds, a serial interface can run at much higher bitrates than a
parralel interface (for a given price)
2. Smaller cables make the problem of cable routing much easier in modern
cases
3. Smaller cables don't obstruct airflow which improves cooling and/or
reduces noise (smaller fans etc.)
SAS roughly the same relation to SCSI as SATA has to ATA, i.e. its a serial
interface replacement for the current SCSI standard which is parralel, the
reasons for doing it are roughly the same.
--
Nik Simpson
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