Sata II
This is another of those things where you should know that you need it even before you know what it is. ATA (Advanced Technology Attachment) is the name of the interface that connects your Hard Drive to your Motherboard and the rest of your computer. The faster the interface can move your data from the hard drive to the processor, then obviously the faster your computer can go (think of your computer as one pig potential bottleneck). Initially it’s never a problem. The interface is much faster than the peripheral attached to it, and everyone thinks that this is the best it’s gonna get and leave it at that. Then of course the Peripherals get faster (and they get faster in a hurry) and the Interface guys have to catch up. Ultra ATA/66 is the caught up technology that lets your computer access your hard drives information at the accelerated pace that today’s programs demand. But don’t worry too much, all of toady’s current Motherboards and Hard Drives are ULTRA ATA/66 and don’t look now but Ultra ATA/100 is already here and fast becoming the industry standard.
The majority of SATA II drives available right now are not capable of 3.0Gbps transfer speeds and others don’t claim support for features we almost take for granted; like NCQ. The original SATA standard – usually referred to as SATA, U150, SATA150, or SATA I – gave us a peak transfer rate from the HDD interface to the system bus of about 1.5Gbps. Many believe that if SATA I drives have transfer rates of 1.5Gbps, then 3.0Gbps rates must be held by drives which have SATA II in their names. This is definitely not the case according to the SATA organization:
“The first step toward a better understanding of SATA is to know that SATA II is not the brand name for SATA’s 3Gb/s data transfer rate, but the name of the organization formed to author the SATA specifications. The group has since changed names, to the Serial ATA International Organization, or SATA-IO.” – SATA-IO-
The three main misconceptions are that:
- “SATA II” has now been renamed to SATA-IO
- SATA-IO must support 3Gbps transfers
- SATA-IO must support features like NCQ and Hot Plug
The SATA-IO, or SATA International Organization, specifies that the SATA standard has the potential to top 6Gbps transfer rates; four times what the majority of drives currently offer. While it is probably questionable if 3Gbps transfer rates are even obtainable outside all but the most intensive SATA RAID scenarios, the fact remains that “SATA II” – the name – has absolutely nothing to do with data rates. Also recall that even though a SATA device might claim 3Gbps transfer rates, 20% of the bandwidth is dedicated for parity in the encoding scheme of the bus – which is why we claim effective thoroughput of 300MBps as opposed to 375MBps.
SATA-IO claims we should identify SATA products in much the same manner we identify CPUs; by distinguishing the speed and feature set in the product description
