Since recent technological developments, nearly every PC, laptop, even desktop had SATA ports to connect any form of drive to their motherboard. To elaborate first consider what actually SATA is? Well, in simple language it is Serial Advanced Technology Attachment or how the external storage is connected to your motherboard.
As mentioned, technological advancement has introduced PCIe- peripheral component interconnect express, NVMe- Non Volatile Memory express, for flash data transfer but still, the reliability of SATA outranks. Let’s discuss deep in to get a better understanding of SATA ports.
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What Actually a SATA Port is?
Often you have seen different ports on your laptop, desktop, or PC. These ports have different purposes to serve. But SATA ports are placed there to serve as connectors. These ports connect large hard drives (HDD), optical drives, or Solid-state drives (SSD) to your system’s motherboard via SATA data cables.
How SATA Port Looks and Works?
On any typical laptop, you will find two SATA ports, one is known as a single port or a connector that is a relatively shorted L- shaped port with 7 pins. While the other connector generally found on systems is a 15 pin connector that is relatively taller in the shape of L.
Both of these ports are designed to serve a specifically shaped drive that can safely land at their base, otherwise, you need to arrange a SATA cable that normally comes along the motherboard. This cable is known as a data cable. It is made of plastic and is used to provide an efficient high-speed information transfer back and forth at both ends.
Moreover, you will find another cable too, known as a power cable, this power cable is connected with the drive and gives electric power to drive for its continuing operations at the initial stage.
*An exception to various models, typically every computing system motherboard has 4 or 8 SATA ports to serve you the best.
Is Buying SATA worth it today?
In the early 2000s, SATA was the performance indicator standard for all PCs’. But now, Non Volatile memory express ports are more inn. One of the main reasons for their popularity is that they don’t need cables like SATA to perform well.
Furthermore, PCI Express is also quite efficient in performance that can transfer data at the speed of 7GBps which is 3 times faster than the speed offered by SATA PORTS.
SATA Versions and Their Color Codes
If you have been in computers for the last 10 to 15 years you must be familiar with the names of SATA1, SATA2, and SATA3. These 3 generations of SATA are still available in the market nowadays.
SATA ports are given different colors just to make their recognition easy. They are segregated based on the type of SATA port and the type of motherboard. A single-slot SATA interface motherboard will have no specific color. But if your motherboard offers multiple SATA interfaces they will have different colors.
SATA 1 offers 1.5 – 3.0 Gb/sec speed of data transfer and appears as a black port.
SATA 2: offers 1.5 – 3.0 Gb/sec speed of data transfer and appears as a red or black port, depending upon the laptop model.
SATA 3: offers the highest speed of 6 Gb/sec data transfer and appears as a blue port, indicating the SATA3 version. These high-speed ports are commonly used on computers nowadays.
What is ESATA Port?
All motherboards have SATA Ports labeled and indicated on their motherboard for user indication and ease. Out of all the 3 SATA generations described above, you will find SATA3 most commonly present on your laptop.
ESATA was used previously but now SATA 3 is taking its place. ESATA stands for External Serial Advanced Technology Attachment. It is an L- shaped connector port, while the other SATA Ports are L-shaped.
ESATA ports can easily be recognized in the older PC versions, but because of their cable attachment issues, they are not much popular now and are normally considered as obsolete. Although these ports allow HDD connection easily but they have separate data and power cables that cannot be interchanged via SATA Cables.
Thus, keeping the customer ease in view, manufacturers are now working with SATA 3, Thunderbolts, and USB ports.
SATA CABLES:
SATA 3 comes with a hand full of genuine cables and when you go to purchase a new motherboard, you will get a package of SATA 3 cable connectors too. But if your cable is not working appropriately or you want to attach a SATA drive on your current PC, then you can use the adapter cable too.
Any sort of adapter cable whose port shape matches so. While doing so, you must check out the speed of your connection. If the speed is affected by using an alien adapter cable then I highly recommend you to go with the genuine SATA 3 cable purchase.
Conclusion:
This is all about” What is SATA? Here’s everything you need to know about it”. To generalize the technical term in simple words it is just a connector that will help you to transfer the data and built connectivity between your drive, say hard drive, optical drive, or any solid-state drive to your motherboard.
Being a common user, you don’t worry to dig deep in SATA generation as speed is the demand of customers now and manufacturers are already using SATA 3 in their systems. Nearly every second laptop that you will find on market will have SATA 3 built-in port.