What Are the Different Hard Drive Interfaces?

With the popularity of iPods, digital cameras and digital camcorders, many people are finding their computer hard drives filling up quickly. Installing a new, larger hard drive is not a difficult task if you know which type of drive to buy. Determine which type of drive you prefer to install, internal or external and the correct hard drive interface.

Internal SATA

Serial ATA (SATA) drives are becoming more popular with computer manufacturers and users. Originally released in 2003, SATA drives have gone through a number of revisions from SATA 1.5 to SATA 3 and finally SATA 6 with data transfer rates of 150, 300 and 600 MB/s respectively. SATA drives use a narrow connector that is available on most motherboards produced after 2005. If your computer does not have a SATA connection, a PCI SATA controller card can be installed.

Internal EIDE

Enhanced Integrated Drive Electronics drives (EIDE) have been around since the mid-1990s. EIDE drives are limited to data transfer rates of 133 MB/s. EIDE drives are connected to the mother board with a wide ribbon cable with forty connecting pins. EIDE cables can support two drives per cable. EIDE drives are quickly being replaced with SATA drives.

External SATA

External Serial ATA drives, or eSATA, are one of the newer releases for external hard drives. One of the biggest benefits of eSATA drives is their speed. ESATA drives have a data transfer rate that is on par with SATA 3, 300 MB/s. Previously, external hard drives were never as fast as internal drives since the connection would slow the data transfer rates. ESATA drives are becoming more popular in other applications besides computers. DVR boxes, media servers and many home entertainment devices use eSATA drives for extra storage.

External FireWire

While not as popular as eSATA, FireWire external drives are used with many digital camcorders and digital video devices. The benefit of FireWire over eSATA is that fact that the drives can be daisy-chained together to hook multiple drives up to one connection. FireWire comes in two speeds, FireWire 400 and 800 with 400 MB/s and 800 MB/s data transfer rates. FireWire is the fastest external drive; however, cost and lower support hinders the adoption of the drives.

External USB

External USB drives are one of the most popular forms of external drives. USB ports are standard on most computers built since 2000. USB 2.0 drives are not as fast as FireWire or eSATA drives; however their compatibility and low cost make them desirable. External USB drives use the same USB connection as most mice, keyboards or thumb drives. While external USB drives are backwards compatible with USB 1.1, the speed will be dramatically lowered.

References

• Maxtor
• Western Digital