SATA

There is a new standard these days for connecting hard disks and DVD drives: SATA. You may already have noticed that new PCs don’t contain the wide 40- or 80-pin ribbon cables any more, but the hard disk is connected with a slender 7-way cable. Even the corresponding power supply connector is different with a SATA drive and now has 15 connections instead of 4. This is clearly illustrated in the drawing: The large connector provides power and the small connector is the data connection. The power supply connector provides 12, 5 and 3.3 V and two ground connections.