It was a rising star in data storage. The technology promised new data speeds for desktop and laptop PCs, pencil-thin cables and power-thrifty electrical designs that would spawn a generation of smaller, cooler-running systems, and a price point that would drive down the cost of storage in enterprise environments.
Designed as a replacement for ATA, the technology would be widely used in home and office PCs and stood to replace the venerable SCSI in an increasing number of workstations and entry-level servers. Eventually, some pundits predicted, it would pack enough performance and reliability to displace SCSI as the mainstay for enterprise computing.
Today, nearly two years after the first Serial ATA products came to market, the technology is delivering on many of its promises, leaving others unfulfilled and raising high expectations for a generation of capabilities to come.
State of origin
Parallel ATA has been the industry standard for connecting hard drives and other devices in desktop and mobile computers for more than a decade due to the technology's connection simplicity, low implementation costs and growing performance. But increasingly complex board designs, growing signal-timing requirements and other technological challenges are preventing parallel ATA from keeping pace with rising desktop performance demands.
Enter Serial ATA, a technology designed chiefly for desktop systems as a replacement for ATA and to make smaller, faster computers possible. It was also billed as a low-cost storage interconnect for workstations and entry-level servers that would deliver greater performance and reliability than ATA. Ultimately, it would offer connectivity for external storage and enable fan-out devices for greater scalability.
Serial ATA also promised higher levels of scalability and reliability through serial signal transmissions. This method, unlike parallel ATA technology, would deliver full bandwidth to each storage device. The technology would also eliminate the need for master/slave jumpers on ATA devices to simplify installation.
When the Serial ATA blueprint was complete, the design called for a 10-year performance roadmap, compatibility with existing ATA software, a seamless transition path from ATA, and intent to target typical volume ATA applications. As a replacement for ATA, for example, Serial ATA would deliver more bandwidth to meet growing demand for higher performance gaming PCs.
Serial ATA added a hot-plug capability that would allow IT managers to expand storage on the fly and deepen ATA's penetration into the workstation and entry-level server markets. However, this optional feature has not been widely implemented, so end users must first ensure both the Serial ATA controller and disk drive support hot-plug, and that the proper hot-plug cabling and backplane are used to avoid potential disk drive damage.
7%
2%
I think a lot of the problem with the uptake is that it (currently) provides little benefit. It is no secret that many of the SATA drives simply have a PATA->SATA convertor on the drive itself. At the motherboard side, it is a similar story.
Many of the drives were designed with the restrictions that come with PATA. Changing the interface and cable may give the device more potential to be quicker, but many existing devices are throttled so they can work on either.
In short, we have the option of paying more money for no noticable improvement in speed. The seek time and MB throughput (the figures that actually make the thing faster or slower) are identical.
Can't imagine why it hasn't taken the world by storm ...