PARALLEL ATA vs. SERIAL ATA HARD DRIVES
SATA hard drives are the most popular hard drives in use today replacing the PATA hard drives.
| Description | Parallel ATA | Serial ATA |
| Hard Drives |  |  |
| Transfer Speed | ATA 33MB/s or UDMA-2 ATA 66MB/s or UDMA-4 ATA 100MB/s or UDMA-5 ATA 133MB/s or UDMA-6 | SATA 1.5 150MB/s SATA 3.0 300MB/s SATA 6.0 600MB/s |
Cable Length | 36 inches | 40 inches |
Cable Pins | 40 | 7 |
Power Connector Pins | 4 | 15 |
Power Consumption | 5V | 250mV |
Hot Swappable | No | Yes |
Device per cable | 2 | 1 |
Hardware, Configurations & Pictures
The following pictures show where to connect a Parallel ATA Hard Drive and a Serial ATA Hard Drive in the motherboard
PATA controllers Primary and Secondary IDE controllers
Serial ATA controllersSATA and PATA Cables
7 pin SATA Cable, 40 pin PATA Rounded Cable and 40 pin PATA Flat Cable
PATA 4 pin Molex Connector and SATA 15 pin Power Connector
Parallel and Serial ATA Pin and Power Connectors
Parallel ATA cables
Serial ATA cables
CONCLUSION
As you can see Serial ATA Hard Drives are faster and more convenient than most of the Parallel ATA Hard Drives. Expect most computers to ship today with the newer Serial ATA Hard Drives.
As you can see Serial ATA Hard Drives are faster and more convenient than most of the Parallel ATA Hard Drives. Expect most computers to ship today with the newer Serial ATA Hard Drives.
special thanks to western digital, seagate, maxtor, directron
