Let’s have a look at SATA. Download PowerPoint: https://itfreetraining.com/handouts/ap11/1a40.pptx Serial ATA (SATA) SATA was released back in the year 2000, so it has been around for a long time. It replaced the earlier PATA standard. PATA used a larger ribbon cable. In contrast, SATA uses a much thinner cable. Due to the size of the PATA cable, it was difficult to work with and blocked air flow inside the computer. The thin SATA cables are easier to work with in comparison. PATA is long obsolete, so don’t worry about understanding how it works, I have just shown it to give you an idea of why SATA was developed the way it was. SATA is short for Serial ATA. The ATA part stands for Advanced Technology Attachment. This term dates back to the early days of computing. If you have not guessed it, SATA is serial while PATA was parallel. With the advancements in data communication, it has become possible to send more data using serial than parallel. Parallel has the problem that when you start speeding the data rate up, it gets harder to keep multiple lines of data in sync with each other. Thus, you can see why serial is used nowadays over parallel. The PATA interface was developed back in the days of slow-moving hard disks. SATA was designed to be compatible with PATA hard disks, but also added improvements. In order to be compatible, SATA supports two modes, IDE and Advanced Host Controller Interface or AHCI. IDE refers to a popular name used for PATA hard disks in the old days. What you need to know is that IDE, referred to here as Native IDE, is the old standard and AHCI is the new standard. You should always use AHCI whenever possible. Given SATA hard disks have been around since the year 2000, it is unlikely nowadays you will come across a storage device that does not support AHCI. This particular BIOS has the option to set SATA type to Native IDE, RAID or AHCI. RAID is used when you want to combine multiple storage devices together, so the operating system sees them as one storage device. In a UEFI setup you may have these three options. With newer computers, you may find that the IDE option is no longer present. As time goes on, manufacturers are starting to drop support. It is by today’s standards very old technology. SATA is much faster than PATA, but there are also other improvements that were made. In order to use these, AHCI needs to be selected. One of the features added is hot swapping. Hot swapping allows a hard disk to be installed or removed while the computer is on. The next big improvement is native queuing. Native queuing means the storage device is able to change the order of the requests it receives. To understand this better, consider that three requests are coming in. These requests are colored green, yellow and orange. Without native queuing, the hard disk does not read the data efficiently. The head of the hard disk will go past blocks it could have read in favor of reading the next block in the queue. Native queuing allows the storage to re-order the requests. The hard disk knows that while it is spinning it can move the head and read the blocks out of order. This has the advantage that all three blocks in this example can be read in one spin of the hard disk rather than two spins. Thus, you can see why you would always want to use AHCI. Now let’s look at the next big change in SATA, that is, the cables themselves. SATA Cables SATA uses two different cables. The first one that I will look at is the data connector. This is an L-shaped connector. Essentially, a keyed connector preventing it from being put in upside down. It provides the equivalent of one bi-directional data lane. Given the number of wires in the connector, it is not possible to add any additional data lanes. Description too long for YouTube. Please see the following link for the rest of the description. https://itfreetraining.com/ap11/1a40 References “The Official CompTIA A+ Core Study Guide (Exam 220-1101)” pages 25 to 26 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_ATA “Picture: eSATA motherboard” https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f3/SATA_Express_connectors_on_a_computer_motherboard.jpg “SATA-IO Frequently Asked Questions” https://sata-io.org/sata-io-frequently-asked-questions “Picture: Number 4” https://pixabay.com/vectors/four-glossy-light-red-number-1293836/ “Picture: Nope” https://unsplash.com/photos/vBxbZokRL10 “Picture: People queuing AI generated” https://www.craiyon.com/ “Picture: CPU” https://pixabay.com/vectors/processor-icon-computer-chip-1714820/ “Picture: Crown” https://pixabay.com/vectors/crown-king-emperor-royal-royalty-42251/ Credits Trainer: Austin Mason https://ITFreeTraining.com/ Voice Talent: AR Hellenberg https://humanaudioventures.my.canva.site/ Quality Assurance: Brett Batson https://www.pbb-proofreading.uk/