Cables, Connectors, and Ports
Connectors and cables present the most visible differences between SATA and parallel ATA drives. Unlike PATA, the same connectors are used on 3.5-inch (89 mm) SATA hard disks for desktop or server computers and 2.5-inch (64 mm) disks for portable or small computers.
Standard SATA connectors for both data and power have a conductor pitch of 1.27 mm (0.050").
A smaller mini-SATA or mSATA connector is used by smaller devices such as 1.8" SATA drives, some DVD and Blu-ray drives, and mini SSDs.
A special eSATA connector is specified for external devices, and an optionally implemented provision for clips to hold internal connectors firmly in place. SATA drives may be plugged into SAS controllers and communicate on the same physical cable as native SAS disks, but SATA controllers cannot handle SAS disks.
Female SATA ports (on motherboards for example) are intended to be used with SATA data cables that have locks or clips to reduce the chance of accidental unplugging. Some SATA cables have right-angled connectors to ease the connection of devices to circuit boards.
Read more about this topic: Serial ATA
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