SATA Revision Standards: A Brief History of SATA Standards Across Ages

Serial Advanced Technology Attachment, or SATA for short, is the global standard for storage device connectors. Even in the face of new standards such as NVMe and PCIe, SATA still remains the most useful storage connector of all time simply because of their compatibility and the sheer number of adapters available such as u.2 adapter to SATA, mSATA adapter USB, SATA express adapter and many more. These adapters help connect new and old standards together for better compatibility across devices.



SATA went through 3 revisions in its lifetime, which aimed at improving their speed, compatibility and multitasking features. Here are the three most important SATA revisions across ages:

SATA Revision 1

SATA’s first revision was released in 2003. The standards set for SATA were for the support of data transfer speeds up to 150 MB/s or 1.5 Gbit/s. This may feel super slow in today’s world, but back in 2003, the speed was unlike anything was ever seen, blasting away the old PATA standards by a considerable margin. Because it was the first-generation revision, it did not support native command queueing (NCQ), which is essential for the drive to do more than one transfer task without breaking down in speed.

SATA Revision 2

SATA’s second revision was released in 2004, only a year after the first revision. The speed of transfer was doubled, peaking at 300 MB/s or 3 Gbit/s, and it also added support for NCQ that enhanced multitasking speeds across the drives. The second revision also saw a couple of minor revisions such as revision 2.5 and revision 2.6. Revision 2.6 bought in many modern standards such as support for adapters and introduction of micro SATA connector for compact devices, among a host of other improvements.

SATA Revision 3

SATA’s third revision was released in 2009, which is the third and the current generation of SATA standard that is in use in most SATA supported devices today. It doubled up the speed of revision 2 standards, bringing in speeds of 6 Gbit/s or 600 MB/s with a revised NCQ management feature for enhanced multitasking transfers. Many other improvements in data transfer quality, primarily for video and audio was brought on board, which optimized power consumption based on usage. This was followed up with 4 separate revisions cumulating up to revision 3.4 which is currently the latest in use and was introduced in 2018. SATA revisions 3.1, 3.2, 3.3 and 3.4 essentially created new SATA standards and support for newer compact devices in form of mSATA (mini SATA), low power consumption, universal storage module features, SATA M.2 standards, support for SATA to USB adapters, support for newer solid-state drive standards and activity indicators, among many others.

SATA Adapters

With so many different connector pin types, it is only convenient that adapters exist to help connect devices with different connections together smoothly. U.2 to SATA adapter, mSATA to USB adapter, SATA express adapter, SATA to NVMe adapter are some of the most commonly used adapters in the storage device industry, although many legacy adapters such as PATA to SATA adapters are still used in some parts of the world.

These adapters are required to adhere to compatible standards in such a way that they do not affect the data transfer speeds and other intended features of the SATA device with the SATA revision standard that is applicable to those devices. That is why most adapter manufacturers usually specify the adapter specifications to help the buyer make an informed decision on what devices the adapter will be compatible with and how the adapter will affect the data transmission rates.

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