What's the difference between any type of hdd?

[cmon1011]

what is the difference between :
SATA
S-ATA
IDE
serial ata
or any other type of harddisk

can any1 mention other type of hdd?
i want to know the difference

thx

[liberal123]

SATA is an abbreviation of Serial ATA.

Serial ATA - Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_ATA)

aaannnnnddd

What is the difference between IDE and SATA? (http://www.google.co.uk/search?hs=Jwx&hl=en&safe=off&client=firefox&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&q=difference+between+IDE+and+SATA&btnG=Search&meta=)

Hope this helps :)

[David Harrison]

There are two different types of hard-drives to be interested in, PATA and SATA. Sometimes PATA is refered to as ATA (which is what it used to be called before it was renamed) and sometimes it is refered to as IDE.

Hard drives with a PATA interface use a 40pin cable to connect to the motherboard, and up to two PATA devices can be connected on the same PATA channel (one as a master, one as a slave). There are several speeds that PATA runs at, but all PATA hard drives now are either ATA-100 or ATA-133 (100 MB/s and 133 MB/s transfer rates).

SATA is a newer interface and SATA hard drives connect via a 7 pin data cable, and in most cases also require a special SATA power connector, though western digital drives also include a standard 4 pin molex power connector on their drives. There are two speeds that SATA drives run at, SATA-150 and SATA-300 (150 MB/s and 300 MB/s, also known as SATA-II). Only one drive is allowed on each SATA channel.

So SATA is newer and faster, requires a special power connector and also requires that you have a motherboard that supports SATA drives so that you can connect them up. However, while PATA is slower than SATA, that doesn't really matter too much, because there are currently no drives available that can take full advantage of the bandwidth offered by PATA, let alone SATA-II.

It really depends on what you have inside your PC as to what type of drive you get.

Incidentally, the S in SATA (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_ATA) stands for serial, and the P in PATA stands for Parallel. ATA stands for Advanced Technology Attachment (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Technology_Attachment).

IDE stands for Integrated Device Electronics, basically it means that there's a circuit board on the device itself that interprets what is read from the disk so that it sends back only data. Drives used to just be a read head and a disk and it was up to the motherboard to interpret the signals, but this was far to restrictive for HDD manufacturers and placed an extra load on the motherboard.

Here's another thread (http://www.webdeveloper.com/forum/showthread.php?t=92971) where someone was considering buying a new HDD, might help clarify some things.

[cmon1011]

a BIG THX from me :D
i saw that thread before, that's why i made this topic :P

[PeOfEo]

Lets not forget about the SCSI interface.

[David Harrison]

I didn't, but there's no point writing about it, since anyone that knows about SCSI will already know what sets it apart from other interfaces.

[cmon1011]

m..
since u mention it?
if u dont mind, can u explain it?
i dont know bout it :P i don't know alot about hardware

[NogDog]

http://www.scsifaq.org/