Whats the difference between SATA hard disks and ATA hard disks?

Serial ATA (SATA) hard disks have.... *Thine and wide power cable *Smaller data cable..as compared to ATA/IDE hard disks.

hmm.. the different?? Sata start with S while Ata start with A.. :) cheers!!

Serial ATA is an evolutionary replacement for the Parallel ATA physical storage interface. The Serial ATA International Organization (SATA-IO) is the group responsible for developing, managing and driving adoption of the Serial ATA specifications. Users of the Serial ATA interface benefit from greater speed, simpler upgradeable storage devices and easier configuration

SATA is serial ATA and ATA is only Advance Technology Attachment, the difference is between speeds of both the Hard disk drives, SATA is having a higher rate of speed, it is around 72000 RPM and ATA is only between 24000-36000 RPM, where as RPM stands for Revolutions Per Second. The rate at which data is fetched from the sata is much higher and that is the reason why if you have sata disk then faster the file calling procedure, other basic difference is the chord SATA will be having a small chord and ATA will be having the standard cord.It is adivisable to have a SATA disk rather than ATA because of its durability also, sata is having good durability and crash proof also. these are the most important differnces between the disks.

In computer hardware , Serial ATA(SATA) is a computer bus technology primarily desinged for transfer of data to and from a hard disk and an optical drive.It was designed as a successor to the legacy Advanced Technology Attachment standard(ATA). Serial ATA adapters and devices communicate over a high-speed serial link.At the physical layer , the data-connection is formed by two pairs of (unidirectional) signal wires.Over these wires , SATA uses LVDS differential signalling , enabling much higher(per-wire) signalling rates (1.5Gbps and up) than traditional parallel ATA. I guess this info is enough for u . and the above last statement answers why serial transmission is faster than parallel transmission. which student r u ? I mean if u r a student what do u study and if u r working then what work and what's ur background .I am asking this because if u still wanna know deep abt SATA AND ATA u need to have knowledge of some things in computer science. I hope my reply helps u :)