▷ Cable sata what is it and which ones can we buy

If you have been a user of a desktop or laptop PC in the last decade and a half, you have almost certainly come across a storage medium based on the SATA (Serial ATA) interface, be it a hard disk (HDD), a solid state drive (SSD) or an optical drive. In this article we explain what the SATA cable is and which we can buy.

Index of contents

SATA cable what they are and types

Although there are a large number of computer products that are designated as SATA devices, the reason they call themselves is because they use the SATA interface. In other words, the cables that connect them to the rest of the PC are connected to a SATA port on the unit and another equal port on the motherboard. Although SATA connectors and cables are generally described as a single port or connector, SATA actually encompasses two: the data connector and the power connector.

The first is the short one, shaped like an “L”, it is a seven-pin connector, while the last one is the longest, with 15 pins. The SATA data cable includes both straight and angled versions, thanks to which the user can choose the version that best suits their needs.

SATA straight

SATA layered

There are also other SATA data cables with a chain shape, these are very useful for connecting multiple drives using just one cable, they are very typical in power supplies. We show you an example.

Beyond the length, they can be distinguished by the cables that connect to them. Where the SATA data cable is almost always made of solid plastic that extends into a single-band flat cable, the SATA power connector extends from your head to multiple thin, rounded cables of different colors. Both devices are required for SATA devices to work and they both do different jobs. The data cable provides the high-speed connection to the rest of the PC, transferring information from one side to the other as requested, while the power cable is what gives the unit the electricity it needs to run. Here is an example of a SATA power cable.

In the market we can find many adapters to power a SATA drive using other connectors of the power supply, such as the Molex or a 6-pin PCI Express connector.

PCI Express to SATA

Molex to SATA

There are versions of the SATA cable that include the two connectors in the same cable, in reality they are two physically joined cables.

How important is SATA today?

SATA was first introduced in 2000, replacing aging PATA ribbon cables. It was revised in 2003 and again in 2004 and 2008, bringing SATA to version three, commonly known as SATA III, or 3.0. These standards increased speed and added additional features to enable faster and more reliable storage units, but did not change the physical appearance of the SATA connector itself. SATA III is the most widely used SATA interface today.

However, over the years there have been a few alternative SATA interfaces. mSATA for portable drives debuted in 2011. The latest generation of that technology is the M.2 standard, although faster drives have moved beyond the mSATA interface and are now leveraging PCIexpress ports for increased performance. SATA Express allowed cross compatibility with SATA III and PCIexpress drives, but was not a popular option, while eSATA offered speeds similar to SATA for external drives. Today, most external high-speed drives use USB 3.0 connections, commonly with the standard Type-C connector.

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Although in 2008 SATA reached almost complete saturation of the PC market with up to 99 percent of all drives using the standard, that is not necessarily the case today. Where many smaller laptops and tablets will use built-in flash memory for their main storage, desktop PCs and high-end laptops will now use faster standards like PCIexpress to deliver higher performance.

Final words and conclusions about the SATA cable

SATA remains an important connection standard, especially for larger hard drives and SSDs in the multi-terabyte range, but for those opting for performance, newer M.2 and NVMe drives are the go-to option. go. They are more expensive, but connecting to a PCIexpress slot rather than a SATA port gives them a connection that is not restricted by the limits of SATA cabling, and allows drives to operate at much faster data rates. For some, as fast as gigabytes of data per second, compared to SATA III's limit of 600MBps.

Surely you are interested in taking a look:

This ends our article on the different types of SATA cable, if you know of any that have passed us, you can leave a comment and we will add it. Soon we will talk in detail about the last two generations of the SATA interface.