SATA Connector on Motherboard – Which One Should You Use?

A viewer on one of my Anet Computers’ YouTube channel videos asked me a question about serial AT attachment connectors. The question is below quoted verbatim.

Which sata connection should optical drive be connected to? should it be #4?

Donald Hxxxx

Serial AT attachment connectors replaced the older school parallel AT attachment connectors. Integrated drive electronics like optical drives and hard disk drives used the parallel AT attachment cables and connectors. In order to give a short answer to this question, it does not matter what serial AT attachment connector on motherboard they plug this optical drive into.

As of this blog post creation 16x blu ray optical discs have a maximum read/write speed of 576 five hundred megabits per second. The first three serial AT attachment connector types one, two, and three have thebfollowing speeds.

* Serial AT Attachment 1 1.5 Gigabits per second
* Serial AT Attachment 2 3.0 Gigabits per second
* Serial AT Attachment 3 6.0 Gigabits per second

Some computer motherboards come with different serial AT attachment types. Some computer motheboards come with just one type of serial AT attachment connection. These serial AT attachment connectors on some computer motherboards are sometimes color coded, if they have different types of serial AT attachment connections.

Since he was asking about an optical drive than most likely he will not need to worry about speed. Also, when not taking into account speed issues, serial AT attachment technology does not require that you hook up devices in sequential order. Back in the day with parallel at attachment or integrated drive electronic devices you had to connect those devices in a specific order and or use jumpers to tell the basic input output system which devices to boot from.

That was once called master and slave. Now, with serial AT attachment you only need to worry about this if using different ports that run at different speeds. You can also specify in the basic input output system your boot order, without meddling with cables and jumpers.

I guess you could plug in your serial AT attachment devices in a specific order so that you remember what devices are which, perhaps when dual booting operating systems? Other than that which specific serial AT attachment connector on that Motherboard you choose, only matters when like I stipulated before you have differen generations of serial AT attachment types. This would be important if for instance you are going to install a solid state drive hard drive.

Solid state hard drives support different types of serial AT attachment technology. These hard drives have a maximum read/write speed that those serial AT attachment connectors on some motherboards may not support.

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