The hard drive is an important component on a computer or laptop that serves as a place to store data. Because of this role, the hard drive is one of the vital components in a computer or laptop device.
Several types of hard drives used on computers or laptops are Advanced Technology Attachment (ATA) and SATA which are the new standard for ATA hard drives.
What are ATA and SATA hard drives?
A Brief History of ATA and SATA
Advanced Technology Attachment or ATA is a hard drive also known as an IDE hard drive, which is a type of hard drive that was made based on the 1986 standard.
This hard drive uses 16 bit parallel which then continues to grow in terms of transfer speed and disk size. This hard disk is widely used in computers with older specifications, such as Pentium 4 and below.
ATA-7 is the last standard for ATA hard drives, which was first introduced by the T13 committee (the committee responsible for determining ATA hard drive standards) in 2001. ATA-7 has a data transfer capability of 133 MB/sec which is the standard data rate for ATA-7 hard drives.
However, many problems are found in parallel ATA ranging from electromagnetic interference (EMI), data integrity, and signal thymine. Finally, the problem was solved in another way, namely by making a standard which was later referred to as SATA.
SATA is made from a 15 pin power cable with a voltage of 250 mV. Although SATA looks like it requires more power than 4 pin type ATA, in fact both hard drives are the same. One of the advantages of SATA is that it has a better maximum bandwidth, which can reach 150 MB/sec.
Difference between ATA and SATA
The most prominent difference between ATA and SATA hard drives is the power and data cable required. ATA uses 200GB as standard with Western Digital Models, which requires a 2 inch ribbon cable coupled with a 40 pin data connection. At the same time, at least 5V is required for each pin out of a total of 4 pins.
In Western Digital's SATA 120GB model, the cable used is half an inch with 7 data connection connectors. Thinner cables make managing data cables on SATA easier. The maximum length of a SATA cable is 1 meter, while an ATA cable is only 18 inches, or about 46 cm.
Advantages of SATA Cables Over ATA Cables
As the latest standard version of the ATA hard drive, as well as a hard drive made to overcome the shortcomings of ATA, of course SATA has advantages over ATA, for example in terms of cables. Compared to ATA cables, SATA cables have several advantages, namely as follows.
The process of installing or connecting SATA cables is easier than ATA cables. This is because the SATA cabling only needs to be done on the ports that are already available.
SATA cables are smaller in size and slimmer to save space when installed.
SATA cables are suitable for reading HDDs with large capacities.
When compared to ATA cables, SATA cables do not heat up easily even when used for a long time. This can happen because SATA cables use power consumption or electrical power that cannot be found on ATA cables.
The use of SATA cables is easier than ATA cables. This is because when using an ATA cable, you need to follow the correct master-slave rules or procedures and make the correct jumper settings.
On the other hand, on a SATA cable, you just need to follow the correct port. That's a brief discussion about the difference between a sata hard disk and a Tisucoding version. For the next discussion, we will discuss the differences between HDD and SSD. See you in the next article