Some questions regarding SATA

[Frank Wallis]

Actually I forgot , can you guys let me know what is SATA(Serial ATA)?

Is it simply a data cable providing an interface between motherboard and Hard Drive that has a higher data transfer rate than other cables and is used for Server level computers.

Or it is a seperate type of Hard Disk?

Sorry for asking such a question actually I have been out of touch from such system side work so I forgot.

Prompt reply would be appreciated.

[jimb0s]

both

[OlyComputers]

Serial ATA is an interface standard used for communication between a motherboard and a drive (usually hard drives but SATA optical drives are becoming popular). As the "serial" component of the name describes it works in one channel, only sending data once, instead of "Parallel" PATA (standard IDE) that sends data twice for redundancy.

SATA and SATAII (just a newer standard with higher throughput, theoretically reaching 3.0gbps although current drives can't utilize the full bus) uses a smaller profile cable that optimizes air-flow and allows the same interface for 3.5" and 2.5" drives because it's only .5" (might be .25", I don't recall and don't have one in front of me).

SATA is beneficial in high-performance environments less for it's technical specifications than it's adoption in the market. Most RAID controllers and add-on HDD controllers are SATA so if you want RAID for performance or data-security, or just need to add additional drives once your built-in ports are full it's your best option.

Personally I think that SATA is more used in the residential desktop and laptop market. They are more common than IDE in the server market but higher end servers use SAS (Serial attached SCSI) or conventional SCSI.

There's also the matter of ESATA, which is pretty much just a standard for connecting external drives directly natively through the SATA standard rather converting to USB or Firewire. It's essentially just a SATA port on the back of your computer and a drive with it's own power supply and a long SATA cable.

@ Frank: if you have any other questions ask.

@ Everone else: I filled this in off memory, if any of it is wrong I'd appreciate the correction.

[Frank Wallis]

Thanks for your explanation, I wanted to know what do you mean by RAID Controller?

Do you mean a controller on a motherboard on which you plug in the data cable?

Regards,

[OlyComputers]

RAID is a standard for making multiple drives interact with each other by Stripping the drives (saving different parts of the data to different drives so you can access both for performance) Spanning (making multiple drives appear to the system as one larger drive) or mirroring (saving all data to two drives so you have an identical image backed up if your system fails) or some combination of the three, sometimes using compression schemes.

A RAID controller is a device that manages these interactions. Most SATA contollers have RAID functionality built in. A RAID controller is either an integrated component of your motherboard or an expansion card that will store the setting on how to make the drives interact.

[Frank Wallis]

thanks for your explanation once again,
you have done my revision.

Now I remember the RAID is actually useful and is fault tolerant.

The data is mirrored from 1 Hard Drive to another and the identical data on both drives acts as a backup of a data.

if 1 of these 2 drives fail ,then data can be recovered or accessed from the other one.

am I right?

[OlyComputers]

That is true of RAID 1 (mirroring) that's one of the three basic concepts of raid (as described in my previous post) and a component of the 5 raid configurations (I think it's just 5) that are different combinations of striping for performance, mirroring for redundancy, spanning for convenience, and compression.