Serial Advanced Technology Attachement (SATA)

SATA is also known as Serial ATA, or S-ATA, and stands for "Serial Advanced Technology Attachment". SATA is responsible for transferring data from hard drives and removable storage media. SATA's predecessor was ATA (AT Attachement) and, unlike SATA, did not offer parallel data transfer, only serial. In 2000, SATA replaced its predecessor ATA as the standard. Intel was largely involved in the development of the SATA standard. SATA is available in different data rates. With version 3 of SATA, transfer speeds of up to 6 gigabits per second can be achieved. With eSata (external SATA), external storage media can also be connected.