SATA (Serial ATA) is a serial bus typically used to connect a PC to mass storage devices. It was developed as a replacement for the ATA parallel bus and offers many advantage including hot-swapping, increased transfer speed and reduced cabling cost and size because fewer conductors are required.
Questions tagged [sata]
68 questions
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votes
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Why does the SATA power connector have so many pins?
With only 4 cables, two of which are ground, it seems like it has way too many pins. Why is this so?

Filip Haglund
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Is there a minimum length for SATA cables?
Today I stumbled across a piece of information that surprised me. Apparently there is a minimum cable length for SATA. From Seagate, a reputable manufacturer of SATA devices:
Serial ATA (SATA) data cable lengths
Serial ATA cables are available in…

pipe
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Is USB-C a technically viable substitute for SATA Express connectors?
SATA Express, the successor to SATA, is too new to be widely used yet, but the advancing speed of SSDs appears to make it inevitable, the same as SATA replaced parallel IDE. Despite the name, it isn't SATA at all; it's either the AHCI or the NVMe…

Porthem
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Micro Controllers Supporting SATA
Are there any micro-controllers which support writing data to large sized SATA disks?

Unkwntech
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Why SATA is simplex even though it has separate TX and RX pairs?
Why is SATA simplex even though it has separate TX+/- and RX+/- pairs? Why can't it be full-duplex like SAS (which has the same interface with multiple ports and is full-duplex).
If I am wrong with this concept please correct me.

user19579
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What is the power specification for SATA?
We are designing a product which needs to provide data and power to an SSD connected using SATA. However, we cannot find a specification of the power requirements for a SATA connector. How much power should a power supply behind a SATA power…

KiekerJan
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Configuring a 7-Series GTXE2 transceiver for Serial-ATA (Gen1/2/3)
Hello this will be an experts questions :) You should be familiar with the following topics
Xilinx Multi-Gigabit-Transceivers (MGTs), especially the 7-Series GTX/GTH transceivers (GTXE2_CHANNEL)
Serial-ATA Gen1, Gen2 and Gen3, especially…

Paebbels
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Interfacing with SATA in embedded systems
Would it be possible to use a SATA interface in an embedded system, for example a MP3 player or a video camera? (speed not critical)
What is the typical way to do this? On chip peripherals, external ICs etc... What are important things to consider…

tehwalris
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Does the separation of the differential pair shielding of a SATA cable matter?
Basically I want to replace a consumer grade SATA cable with something a bit more tolerant to high temps and other environmental stresses.
The general cross section of a SATA cable looks like this:
And the cable I want to use looks like this:
My…

Jake Robinson
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Hard drive that has the ability to "read" old data while it performs a write?
Is there a hard drive (protocol command, specific model, etc.) that, while writing new data over old data, it "read"/return the old data back to the controller/OS? (Analogous to a simultaneous read-write).
I've been looking up SATA/hard drisk…

eitan27
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SATA controller on Artix 7
Problem background: My ultimate aim is to implement a SATA host controller on an Artix 7 FPGA. Having said that I am first focusing on the physical layer. Through my research I have found and read through open source IP located here:…

sacco
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Difference between busses
I think I am confusing the difference between some of the of busses, such as IDE, SATA, USB, and PCI. What is the relationship between all four, how are they connected to each other? From what I read it seems like PCI connects them together as well…

rubixibuc
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Implementing/using a SATA controller
I start by saying that I'm not an electrical engineer, I've got a basic understanding of things from school and from work (I'm a long time computer programmer), but this is not much my field of competence.
I'm in the process of evaluating the…

motoDrizzt
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Simulate HDD using ATMega168
I'm going to start a new project and I wonder if the concept makes sense.
(I'm not so familiar with ATA specifications to answer this by myself :))
The concept:
HW design:
"SATA connector on motherboard" <-> "SATA cable" <-> "SATA/IDE HW converter"…

usecide
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Is there a way to split a single SATA port into two SATA ports?
I am making a very low-cost system with a Allwinner A20 chip as the heart. I would like to have a main boot drive and a separate disk drive. Sadly, to my knowledge there is only one SATA port.
I can't drop either for various reasons, and this is an…

R Baker
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