PARALLEL ATA vs. SERIAL ATA HARD DRIVES
SATA hard drives are the most popular hard drives in use today replacing the PATA hard drives.
| Description | Parallel
ATA |
Serial
ATA |
| Hard Drives |  |
 |
| Transfer Speed | ATA 33MB/s
or UDMA-2 ATA 66MB/s or UDMA-4 ATA 100MB/s or UDMA-5 ATA 133MB/s or UDMA-6 |
SATA 1.5
150MB/s SATA 3.0 300MB/s SATA 6.0 600MB/s SATA 1969MB/s |
Cable Length |
36 inches |
40 inches |
Cable Pins |
40 |
7 |
Power Connector Pins |
4 |
15 |
Power Consumption |
5V |
250mV |
Hot Swappable |
No |
Yes |
Device per cable |
2 |
1 |
Hardware, Configurations & Pictures
The following pictures show where to connect a Parallel ATA Hard Drive and a Serial ATA Hard Drive in the motherboard
PATA controllers
Primary and Secondary IDE controllers or EIDE ports
Serial ATA controllers
SATA and PATA Cables
7 pin SATA Cable, 40 pin PATA Rounded Cable and 40 pin PATA
Flat Cable
PATA
4 pin Molex Connector and SATA 15 pin Power Connector
Parallel and Serial ATA Pin and Power Connectors
CONCLUSION
As you can see Serial ATA Hard Drives are faster and more convenient
than most of the Parallel ATA Hard Drives. Expect most computers to
ship today with the newer Serial ATA Hard Drives.
special thanks to western digital, seagate, maxtor, directron