Beyond length, they can be differentiated by the cables that connect to them. Where the SATA data cable is usually made up of solid plastic, which extends into a flat, single-band cable ...

The remaining 40-pin or 44-pin connectors plug into the drives. Serial ATA (SATA) cables are also designed to connect storage devices to motherboards. They provide higher data transfer speeds and have ...

Serial ATA (SATA) was introduced in 2003 and brought many improvements including smaller, less expensive cables, native hot-swapping, and faster data rates. Within five years of replacing PATA ...