What is the different between ATA and SATA hard drive?

Sata: Serial ATA (Serial Advanced Technology Attachment or SATA) is a new standard for connecting hard drives into computer systems. As its name implies, SATA is based on serial signaling technology, unlike current IDE (Integrated Drive Electronics) hard drives that use parallel signaling. SATA has several practical advantages over the parallel signaling (also called Parallel ATA or PATA) that has been used in hard drives since the 1980s. SATA cables are more flexible, thinner, and less massive than the ribbon cables required for conventional PATA hard drives. SATA cables can be considerably longer than PATA ribbon cables, allowing the designer more latitude in the physical layout of a system. Because there are fewer conductors (only 7 in SATA as compared with 40 in PATA), crosstalk and electromagnetic interference (EMI) are less likely to be troublesome. The signal voltage is much lower as well (250 mV for SATA as compared with 5 V for PATA). ATA: ATA (Advanced Technology Attachment) is the official name that American National Standards Institute group X3T10 uses for what the computer industry calls Integrated Drive Electronics (IDE). Hope this information helps!!!! Cheers

It's just a different interface used for hard drives. SATA can be up to a 3GB transfer rate making it faster, but that is largely irrelevant since almost all hard drives are 7200RPM and will work just as fast on SATA or PATA. One benefit of SATA that I can't imagine people using is that it supports hot-plugging. That means you can plug and unplug SATA drives while the computer is still on. Also, motherboards can only support up to 4 PATA devices max, 2 of those are usually CD/DVD drives meaning you typically can't have more than 2 PATA Hard drives. With SATA some motherboards support up to 8. I think some server boards can even do 10 or 12. That's great if you need an extreme amount of storage space.

The difference between ATA and SATA hard drive, first its cable connector. SATA connector smaller the ATA connector so its must be more efficient. Second is for SATA the data will be transfered faster than ATA. So you will get your data transfered or read faster than ATA hard drive.