Q. Can you explain how a SATA 1 interface would limit an ATA hard drive? You consistently talk about SATA II as though there's a possibility that it would improve performance over SATA 1. Could you give me just one example of where SATA II would actually provide more performance?

As far as I know, there are no ATA hard drives available that read or write faster than 100 MBps, which is 800 Mbps, which is about half the bandwidth of even SATA 1, let alone SATA II.—Frank Jelenko

A. SATA-IO was designed to scale to very high-end systems. It is true that typical users with one SATA hard drive and one SATA optical drive may never saturate their SATA ports. We consistently measure throughputs from modern desktop hard drives that max out at around 70 MBps.

However, it's increasingly the case that multiple devices are being attached to SATA ports. As soon as you attach an external RAID box to an eSATA (external SATA) port, for example, that external subsystem can deliver substantially more data.

Also, as we see more solid-state hard drives, it's likely that we'll see drives that can deliver sustained throughput higher than the original 150 MBps of SATA, and even approach the 300 MBps of current-generation SATA-IO ports.