Can I mix and match Serial ATA hard drives with IDE hard drives?

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Irfan, Khalid

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Sep 19, 2006, 8:29:27 PM9/19/06

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Serial ATA Description

Serial ATA (SATA) is a storage interface designed to replace parallel ATA (e.g. IDE technology). SATA was designed for a variety of reasons including performance headroom, cabling issues, and voltage tolerance requirements. SATA combines software transparency, low cost, scalability, and design flexibility. SATA has attracted widespread industry support through the Serial ATA Working Group.

SATA is defined as the primary inside the box storage connection only, with no outside the box implementation. It is a storage device centric technology and does not support other peripherals, such as cameras, scanners, or printers.

The Serial ATA 1.0 specification outlines the following benefits:

Performance Headroom: SATA provides higher performance than equivalent ATA with performance scaling from 150MB/sec available in Generation 1, to 300MB/sec available in Generation 2, and is ultimately forecasted to reach 600MB/sec during its anticipated 10-year road map.
Software Transparency with Legacy Parallel ATA: This enables a relatively easy transition to the new technology.
Low Cost: SATA is cost competitive with equivalent Parallel ATA solutions, including hosts, devices, and cabling in volume quantities.

Comparing Serial ATA to Parallel ATA (IDE)

	Parallel ATA (IDE)	Serial ATA (SATA)
Theoretical Transfer Rate (over life of SATA)	133MB/sec	Generation 1 - 150MB/sec; Generation 2 - 300MB/sec; forecast 600 MB/sec
Transfer Mode	PIO - UDMA-6	Generation 1 or Generation 2
Data Cable	40-pin, 80-conductor IDE	7-pin SATA
Max Data Cable Length	18 inches	1 meter (39 inches)
Power Cable	IDE Power Cable	SATA Power Cable
Power Consumed	5 V	250 mV

The following illustration shows an example of a SATA data cable.

SATA Cable