CompTIA A+ 1101 SATA, SCSI, and PATA Device Cables

Question 1

• uses a 1 meter cable
• internal
• 7-pin connector
• connects a storage device to the motherboard
• uses a 15-pin connector to connect to power

revision 1.0:
- SATA 1.5 Gb/s

revision 2.0:
- SATA 3.0 Gb/s

revision 3.0:
- SATA 6.0 Gb/s

revision 3.2:
- SATA 16 Gb/s

Answer 1

SATA (Serial Advanced Technology Attachment)

Question 2

• speeds match the (internal) SATA version
• uses a 2 meter cable
• similar in size to SATA, with a very different connector

Answer 2

eSATA (External SATA)

Question 3

• originally designed to string many peripherals together on a single controller (up to 16 devices in an SCSI chain)
• parallel and serial connectivity, depending on the format
• not just for hard drives

Answer 3

The SCSI (Small Computer Systems Interface) Standard

Question 4

• move from parallel to serial
• point-to-point connection
• no daisy chains or terminator required, unlike parallel SCSI

Answer 4

Serial Attached SCSI (SAS)

Question 5

• speeds from 16 MB/s through 133 MB/s
• a legacy technology

Answer 5

The PATA (Parallel AT Attachment) Standard

Question 6

• 40-pin connectors on a ribbon cable
• the first device is “device 0”, and the end device is “device 1” (swapped when using an 80-pin cable, which has minimized cross talk)

Answer 6

PATA Cabling

Question 7

• the missing pin allows us to properly orient the cable into the connector

Answer 7

PATA Connector