Background

• ATA (Advanced Technology Attachment) and SATA (Serial Advanced Technology Attachment) are two interfaces by which a hard drive or optical drive can be connected on the inside of a computer. These two standards apply to both laptop and desktop computers, but the primary difference is that in laptops, the two types of drives are not interchangeable. Although one type of drive can be used with the other type of connector in a desktop computer with the use of an adapter, laptop computers do not have room for adapters. Your choice of an ATA or SATA-based laptop will influence the type of hard drive or optical drive that you can use for the rest of the time you own it.
  
  

Speed

• Regardless of a hard drive's speed, it is limited by the maximum speed of the interface it is connected to. The ATA interface is limited to a speed of 133 MB (1,064 megabits) per second, and by the early 2000s, hard drives were quickly approaching that level of performance. The ATA interface could not be made any faster, as the wires used by the interface were already pushed to the limit. SATA was developed as a replacement for ATA, debuting in 2003 with a maximum speed of 1,500 megabits per second. The SATA interface has been continually refined, reaching a new maximum of 3,000 megabits before doubling again to 6,000 megabits per second in the SATA 3.0 standard, completed in 2009.
  
  

Native Command Queuing (NCQ)

• Laptop computers benefit from the increased speed of the SATA interface, but in the actual operation of a computer, Native Command Queuing (NCQ) is what makes SATA truly shine. With the ATA interface, hard drives execute read and write commands in the order that they are sent by the computer. NCQ is a better solution; if a long command and a short command are sent to the hard drive at the same time, the drive will intelligently complete the quicker operation first. In a situation in which you might be playing a music file, browsing the web and downloading a program at the same time, NCQ allows the computer to continue operating smoothly, without stuttering.
  
  

Easy Setup

• If your laptop's hard drive ever needs to be replaced or upgraded, you will be happy if it uses the SATA interface. ATA hard drives use jumpers, plastic tabs that must be carefully configured before the drive can be installed in the computer. SATA hard drives can generally be plugged directly into the computer with no special configuration. Your computer will automatically recognize the size of the new drive without you needing to do anything.
  
  

Solid State Disks (SSD)

• If you are considering a laptop computer with a solid state disk (SSD) instead of a conventional hard drive, be warned that you should never purchase an SSD that uses the ATA interface. Solid state disks are one of the hottest new technologies for laptop computers, supporting data transfer speeds of over 230 megabytes (1,840 megabits) per second. Pairing an SSD with the ATA interface will decrease the maximum performance of the disk by more than 40 percent.