4
Serial ATA (SATA) Drive Guidelines and
Features
SATA Hard Drives
Serial ATA Hard Drive Characteristics
Number of pins/conductors in data cable
7/7
Number of pins in power cable
15
Maximum data cable length
39.37 in (100 cm)
Data interface voltage differential
400-700 mV
Drive voltages
3.3 V, 5 V, 12 V
Jumpers for configuring drive
N/A
Data transfer rate
3.0 Gb/s
SATA Hard Drive Cables
SATA Data Cable
Always use an HP approved SATA 3.0 Gb/s cable as it is fully backwards compatible with the SATA 1.5
Gb/s drives.
Current HP desktop products ship with SATA 3.0 Gb/s hard drives.
SATA data cables are susceptible to damage if overflexed. Never crease a SATA data cable and never
bend it tighter than a 30 mm (1.18 in) radius.
The SATA data cable is a thin, 7-pin cable designed to transmit data for only a single drive. See
SATA
Data and Power on page 64
for the pinout information.
SMART ATA Drives
The Self Monitoring Analysis and Recording Technology (SMART) ATA drives for the HP Personal
Computers have built-in drive failure prediction that warns the user or network administrator of an
impending failure or crash of the hard drive. The SMART drive tracks fault prediction and failure
indication parameters such as reallocated sector count, spin retry count, and calibration retry count. If
the drive determines that a failure is imminent, it generates a fault alert.
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Chapter 4 Serial ATA (SATA) Drive Guidelines and Features
