Which one is better IDE or SATA?

[NetWorm]

hi there...
can any one provide me the basic differences between IDE and SATA?
Also which one is better?
Please provide few replies on it.............

[Hardwareman]

About IDE:

AT Attachment (ATA) and AT Attachment Packet Interface (ATAPI) are interface standards for the connection of storage devices such as hard disks, solid-state drives, and CD-ROM drives in computers. The standard is maintained by X3/INCITS committee T13.

The current ATA/ATAPI standard is the result of a long history of incremental technical development. ATA/ATAPI is an evolution of the AT Attachment Interface, which was itself evolved in several stages from Western Digital's original Integrated Drive Electronics interface. As a result, many near-synonyms for ATA/ATAPI and its previous incarnations exist, including abbreviations such as IDE which are still in common informal use. With the market introduction of Serial ATA in 2003, the original ATA was retroactively renamed Parallel ATA (PATA).

Parallel ATA standards allow cable lengths up to only 18 inches (46 centimeters). Because of this length limit the technology normally appears as an internal computer storage interface. For many years ATA provided the most common and the least expensive interface for this application. By the beginning of 2007 it had largely been replaced by Serial ATA (SATA) in new systems.

[Maxforu]

SATA:

The Serial ATA (SATA, IPA: /ˈseɪtə/, /ˈsætə/ or /ˈsɑːtə/) computer bus is a storage-interface for connecting storage controllers (most commonly integrated into laptop computers and desktop motherboards) to mass storage devices (such as hard disk drives and optical drives).

Conceptually, SATA is a 'wire replacement' for the older AT Attachment standard (ATA). Serial ATA host-adapters and devices communicate via a high-speed serial cable.

SATA offers several compelling advantages over the older parallel ATA interface: reduced cable-bulk and cost (8 pins vs 80 pins), faster and more efficient data transfer, and the ability to remove or add devices while operating (hot swapping).

As of 2009, SATA has all but replaced the legacy ATA (retroactively renamed Parallel ATA or PATA, also known as IDE or EIDE) in all shipping consumer PCs. (PATA remains dominant in industrial and embedded applications dependent on CompactFlash storage.)

[Killen]

My view on IDE:

The first version of what is now called the ATA/ATAPI interface was developed by Western Digital under the name Integrated Drive Electronics (IDE). Together with Control Data Corporation (who manufactured the hard drive part) and Compaq Computer (into whose systems these drives would initially go), they developed the connector, the signalling protocols, and so on with the goal of remaining software compatible with the existing ST-506 hard drive interface. The first such drives appeared in Compaq PCs in 1986.

The term Integrated Drive Electronics (IDE) refers not just to the connector and interface definition, but also to the fact that the drive controller is integrated into the drive, as opposed to a separate controller on or connected to the motherboard. The integrated controller presented the drive to the host computer as an array of 512-byte blocks with a relatively simple command interface. This relieved the software in the host computer of the chores of stepping the disk head arm, moving the head arm in and out, and so on, as had to be done with earlier ST-506 and ESDI hard drives. All of these low-level details of the mechanical operation of the drive were now handled by the controller on the drive itself. This also eliminated the need to design a single controller that could handle many different types of drives, since the controller could be unique for the drive. The host need only ask for a particular sector, or block, to be read or written, and either accept the data from the drive or send the data to it.

The interface used by these IDE drives was standardized in 1994 as ANSI standard X3.221-1994, AT Attachment Interface for Disk Drives. After later versions of the standard were developed, this became known as "ATA-1".

[T.J.]

check this one:

The SATA standard defines a data cable with seven conductors and 8 mm wide wafer connectors on each end. SATA cables can have lengths up to 1 m, and connect one motherboard socket to one hard drive. PATA ribbon cables, in comparison, connect one motherboard socket to up to two hard drives, carry either 40 or 80 wires, and are limited to 45 cm in length by the PATA specification. Thus, SATA connectors and cables are easier to fit in closed spaces and reduce obstructions to air cooling. They are more susceptible to accidental unplugging and breakage than PATA, but cables can be purchased that have a 'locking' feature, whereby a small spring holds the plug in the socket.

Parallel ATA uses single-ended signaling. In this system, noise combines with the data signal during the signal propagation. Noise causes significant interference with the data signal at higher speeds. In order to reduce the interference caused by noise, the driving voltage of Parallel ATA reaches as high as 5 V. Although the higher voltage can overcome the noise to mitigate interference, the 5 V is too high for modern high speed silicon devices. Thus the fabrication cost of signal driver ICs is higher, and the speed is limited in comparison to low voltage silicon ICs.

In comparison, SATA systems use differential signaling. In this system, the signal does not use an absolute voltage but a difference between two voltages of opposite polarity, and it is easy to filter out the noise from the data signal at the receiving end. The higher noise rejection allows the SATA system to use only 500 mV peak-to-peak differential voltage to carry the signal at higher speeds without distortion or noise interference. (An additional side effect of lower signal voltage is lower radiated RF emissions, which means less noise and interference for other circuits both inside and outside the computer and easier compliance with FCC regulations limiting emitted RFI.)

Compared with the 5 V driving voltage in PATA ribbon cables, the 0.5 V in SATA cables in theory make the SATA system much more power-efficient. However most SATA chipsets need significantly more power than PATA chipsets, due to the faster required encoding per wire. Power usage in signalling is generally proportional to the signalling rate, since faster signalling requires shorter transition times, meaning faster change of voltage levels, and faster voltage change in turn requires higher current. Since all wires have greater than zero resistance, current directly corresponds to power dissipation. Further, silicon technology generally dissipates power mainly when transitioning between voltage states, so a faster rate of state change dissipates more power as heat. It is inevitable that a much higher signalling rate would be required to achieve the same data rate with a serial system as with a parallel system, because all of the 16 bits plus control bits of a transfer cycle have to be sequentially transmitted by the serial system in the same time that the parallel system completes one cycle. In fact, if SATA could and did use the same voltage as (Parallel) ATA, then SATA's power consumption would be much higher than currently.