The ability to hot-swap devices has made SATA a possible successor to USB connections used with such things as external hard disks, which can be plugged into the computer to provide large removable storage or data.

It provides high data transfer rates between the motherboard and storage device, and uses thinner cables that can be used to hot-swap devices (plug in or unplug the devices while they're still operating). SATA is an acronym for Serial Advanced Technology Attachment, and is the next generation that will probably replace ATA. If the latter is selected for both drives, the first drive in the chain will be the master drive. Most drives have three settings: master, slave, and cable-controlled. User-configurable settings on the drives determine which will act as master and which as slave. One drive functions as the “master,” which responds first to probes or signals on the interrupt (a signal from a device or program to the operating system that causes the OS to stop briefly to determine what task to do next) that is shared with the other, “slave” drive that shares the same cable. Up to two ATA devices (hard disks or CD-ROM drives) can be connected to each connector, in a master/slave configuration. Almost all modern PC motherboards include two EIDE connectors. It is also referred to as Advanced Technology Attachment (ATA), a standard of the American National Standards Institute (ANSI).

Integrated Drive Electronics is so named because the disk controller is built into, or integrated with, the disk drive's logic board. IDE is an acronym for Integrated Drive Electronics, and EIDE is an acronym for Enhanced IDE. The most common hard disk interfaces include: ▪ Over the years, a number of different interfaces have been developed, allowing the hard disk to be connected to a disk controller that's usually mounted directly on the computer's motherboard. The interface used by an HDD serves as a communication channel, allowing data to flow between the computer and the HDD. The hard disk interface is one of several standard technologies used to connect the hard disk to the computer so that the machine can then access data stored on the hard disk.

External hard drive for windows 7