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In computer hardware, Serial ATA (SATA, IPA: or ) is a computer bus technology primarily designed for transfer of data to and from a hard disk. more...

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It is the successor to the legacy Advanced Technology Attachment standard (ATA). This older technology was retroactively renamed Parallel ATA (PATA) to distinguish it from Serial ATA. Both SATA and PATA drives are IDE (Integrated Drive Electronics) drives, although IDE is often misused to indicate PATA drives.

SATA 1.5 Gbit/s

First-generation SATA interfaces, also known as SATA/150 or SATA 1, run at 1.5 gigabits per second (Gbit/s). Serial ATA uses 8B/10B encoding at the physical layer. This encoding scheme has an efficiency of 80%, resulting in an actual data transfer rate of 1.2 Gbit/s, or 150 megabytes per second (MB/s). The relative simplicity of a serial link and the use of LVDS allow both the use of longer drive cables and an easier transition path to higher speeds.

SATA 3.0 Gbit/s

Soon after SATA's introduction, enhancements were made to the standard. A 3 Gbit/s signalling rate was added to the PHY layer, offering up to twice the data throughput. Like SATA 1.5 Gbit/s, SATA 3.0 Gbit/s uses 8B/10B encoding, resulting in an actual data transfer rate of 2.4 Gbit/s, or 300 MB/s.

This is not "actual" data rate since no single Hard Disk can supply data at 300MB/sec. So unless multiple hard disks are run in RAID configuration, SATA II is not any faster than SATA I disks. Currently two WD Raptors 10,000rpm hard disks running in RAID0 (striping) fill about 80% of SATA I (1.5Gb/sec). Therefore unless you plan to run 4 WD Raptors in RAID0 configuration it is not worth having SATA II.

To ensure seamless backward compatibility between SATA 1.5 Gbit/s controllers and SATA 3.0 Gbit/s devices, the latter devices are required to support the original 1.5 Gbit/s rate. In practice, some older SATA controllers do not support SATA speed negotiation, and require that SATA 3.0 Gbit/s peripherals be manually hardlimited to 1.5 Gbit/s with the use of a jumper. Chipsets which exhibit this problem include the VIA VT8237 and VT8237R south bridges, and the VIA VT6420 and VT6421L standalone SATA controllers. SiS's 760 and 964 chipsets also initially exhibited this problem, though it can be rectified with an updated SATA controller ROM.

The 3.0 Gbit/s specification has been very widely referred to as “Serial ATA II” (“SATA II”), contrary to the wishes of the Serial ATA standards organization that authored it. The official website notes that SATA II was in fact that organization's name at the time, the SATA 3.0 Gbit/s specification being only one of many that the former SATA II defined, and suggests that “SATA 3.0 Gbit/s” be used instead. (The Serial ATA standards organization has since changed names, and is now “The Serial ATA International Organization”, abbreviated SATA-IO.)

Read more at Wikipedia.org