The recent wave of activity and positioning regarding SATA (Serial-Advanced Technology Architecture) disk drives is one of the more interesting concepts developing in the storage industry. Some estimates indicate that ATA-class disks are expected to be used in as much as 40% of all disk subsystems by 2006. The prior generation of Parallel ATA disks use a 100MB/sec shared sub-channel whereas SATA disks offer a bus speed of 150MB/sec on a dedicated path using a point-to-point topology. The follow-on SATA II drive expected to appear sometime in 2004 will offer a 300MB/sec bus speed. SATA disks are just now being positioned as a new level in the storage hierarchy between online disk storage and Nearline or automated tape library storage.
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