Sata & Ata hardrives???

Whats the differnce between SATA and ATA hardrives

Thanks

Thanks for another worthless post andrew.


NanoWarrior- check out
http://www.tweaktown.com/document.p...article&dId=605

serail transfers the data serially, i.e bit by bit. ATA is parallel so transfers a whole string of bits then another whole string of bits.

surprisingly, or possibly not serial can and i often faster than parallel because parallel has to work on a clock cycle. Serial is able to transfer at different rates, if you think of your internet connection this is a serial connection and so can operate at different speeds. The distance of parallel is also quite a restriction, it cant transfer more than something like 12inches (although i might have just made that distance up).

i have a feeling that you mey be able to fit more than two hard drives per serial ata slot, rather than the 2 you are limited to with ATA, and i think the drives would be able to be of different speeds without causing the system to slow down too much. With ATA the clock would have to slow to work with the slowest thing on the cable, therefore limiting any transfer to the speed of the slowest drive.

Hmm, I read the link, thanks. So SATA is better than ATA. I m still a little confused on exactly why SATA is better than ATA. Is it because data from the hard drive when you load up a program goes through the DMA controller and streight to the front side bus to RAM? And what exactly is a DMA controller?