Bob said:
Why are SATA drives faster than PATA when parallel ports are faster
than serial?
Thanks.
Parallel ATA has a "bad" design scheme, of supporting two drives per cable.
That compromises signal integrity (reflections off the middle
connector and stub capacitance).
If PATA only supported one drive, you could use differential signaling
on the ribbon cable (with termination resistors at the end, for good
signal quality), and get higher performance than SATA. But where would
the fun be in that ?
SATA is kinda a dopey standard, in that the data cable is 7 signals,
and the power is 15 signals. The design seems to be predicated on
using a "wafer" connector, and is optimized for supporting server backplanes
and "snapping" drives into place. That means the connector was
designed, to make servers easier to design. Designing it for
the desktop was an afterthought. The fact that the first
generation SATA cables would fall out, shows how much attention
was paid to desktops. That has since been fixed.
I still wouldn't give them high marks for the connector. On some
motherboards, the SATA connector on the motherboard has been ripped
right off the motherboard, by plugging and unplugging. When
was the last time that happened to a ribbon cable connector ?
Paul