Difference between SATA and PATA

The Parallel ATA (PATA) technology predates the Serial ATA (SATA) one by more than a decade. It was the premier industry standard for many years. Both technologies are basically interface devices, that connect your hard disk drives, optical disk that is your DVD drive and other storage devices, to the mother board of your computer through the host adapter. They carry out the most important task of data transfer.

Comparison of SATA and PATA

Normally, parallel devices are supposed to transfer data faster than series devices. For once, this is not true! SATA is actually a lot faster than PATA. A comparison of the cable lengths of the two devices reveals that while PATA cables which number up to 26 can attain a combined maximum length of 18 inches, SATA can have only 1 meter of cable in length. Owing to the abundant number of wide cables for PATA, it is bound to take a lot of space. In an already congested computer cabinet, this makes it difficult for heat, to get dissipated.

Compared to that, SATA has only 2 quite narrow wires which are longer in length. This makes it easy to arrange them in a convenient fashion so as to avoid congestion.

The most important difference between the two is the data transfer rates they offer. Here SATA is inherently superior. It offers a speed of 600 MB/sec which causes a phenomenal decrease in data transfer time from the hard disk and other devices. However, PATA offers only a paltry speed of 133MB/sec.

The power consumption of a SATA device is only a fraction of what a PATA device requires. PATA requires 5 V for operation while SATA takes only 250 mV. With increasingly compacted computer architecture in laptops and their limited battery capacity, a lower power requirement is always better. More the power input, more is the possibility of heat!

With the advent of devices like flash drives or pen drives, it is increasingly necessary that your computer has 'hot swapping' facility. That is, you should be able to attach and remove these portable storage devices without the computer requiring any rebooting! This facility is not available in PATA devices and here is where the SATA technology delivers the coup de grace to its predecessor. All SATA devices have 'hot swap' facility. Once the software required for this hot swapping which is built in for most operating systems now, is installed, the facility is available in most of the modern laptops and computers which have SATA devices. SATA also has a provision for full duplex data transfer. That is data sending and receiving is possible simultaneously. Here too, PATA delivers a blank. It is yet to incorporate this.

Continuing the story of woe for the PATA technology, it has software incompatibility problems too! Many times you cannot install a particular operating system if its PATA incompatible. As usual, SATA devices do not have these problems and have an almost perfect software compatibility.

It doesn't take a brilliant man to predict that the SATA technology is going to phase out PATA and as of 2009, it almost has. Still, PATA devices are used in certain niche areas like industries using embedded technology, that have Compact Flash storage facility.

This is how it is in today's race of technology. New products fast outclass the old ones. The time of being in vogue for any new technology is shorter now. Redundancy is a fate that is inevitable for every product if modifications are not made according to newer demands!