Well you know the width of a SATA cable.
Serial data transfer right.

Take 4 SATA cables in parallel to a Hard Drive
that has four SATA connectors. What do you
have ... parallel data transfer (4 wide SATA).

Now the data xfer rate should be 4 times faster
than a single SATA cable and the cable width
would be no wider than a PATA cable.

Now I know this is a design stretch, but if you
have a hard drive with Integrated SATA Electronics,
how hard could it be to repeat the circuit design 3 more
times to get what I'll call a SATA IIx4 interface.

Problem is I doubt the current level of a Hard Drive's
mechanical rotation, read/write data rates and buffer
size would be able to feed a 4 wide SATA connection.

--
JS
http://www.pagestart.com


"Bill in Co." wrote in message
...
The point is, there is no practical design possible that will allow a
parallel cable to reach the transfer rates of a serial one, for the
reasons stated. Note the emphasis on the word practical (meaning
realizable) - not theoretical (such as with a half meter wide cable,
and/or shielded cable(s,) or whatever). (Shielded cables suffer from
increased capacitance which limits their transfer rate, so even if each
data signal cable (16 for 16 bit, or 32 for a 32 bit) were shielded, it's
still a no go).

JS wrote:
Yes I know about 40 vs 80 design,
what I'm talking about is a total redesign.

And they do have round PATA cables,
not rated any faster but they are not wide and flat.

--
JS
http://www.pagestart.com


"Bill in Co." wrote in message
...
They already tried that with the 80 conductor fast ATA cables. While
it
helped out a lot, it sure couldn't even come close to SATA.

Now, if you want a 40 or 80 conductor parallel cable that's a meter
wide,
with very wide separation between all the signal carrying conductors (of
which there are a LOT, for parallel)..... perhaps that might work. :-)

Bottom line: it's not at all practical.

JS wrote:
A cable redesign could eliminate
the crosstalk.

--
JS
http://www.pagestart.com


"Bill in Co." wrote in message
...
On the surface, that makes sense - but only on the surface. Let me
explain:
In practice, it's a false assumption due to the inherent crosstalk
problems between adjacent signal carrying conductors in the Parallel
ATA
cable. And THAT limits the max transfer rate. OTOH, Serial cables
do
NOT have that problem, since only a single line is carrying the data.
Hence, serial cables (like in SATA) can be, and are, much faster.

JS wrote:
Not crazy over the SATA connectors either.
SATA or Serial ATA has another design flaw
in that by nature serial data transfers can never
be as fast as parallel.

--
JS
http://www.pagestart.com


"Gerry" wrote in message
...
I have had a disk connection problem which seems to relate to
failing
sata
cables. The BIOS has failed intermittently to detect one or both
hard
drives. The problem was more obvious with the master drive so I
replaced
the cable 14 days ago and there was no further problem until this
morning.
The problem this morning was the slave drive so I have replaced the
cable
for that drive. It has now been working for a bit over two hour.

The problem first became apparent a month ago when I found the
system
would freeze after it had been running some time. Resetting
sometimes
worked and sometimes resulted in a failed boot. Eventually the
system
would boot but the problem would happen again some hours later or
the
next
day. Sometimes there have been Event Viewer reports -mainly ID: 11
referring to the Controller. Often the problem is unreported. This
is
probably because the Error is occurring before Event Viewer starts.

From a friend I got these comments.

"In my view, the SATA 'Connector' is an engineering blunder. A
sort-of
flat
sleeve slides over a notched part on the edge of the board whereupon
sit
some exposed/un-insulated traces. Flat conductors encased within a
plastic
bit are slid into contact with them. There is no mechanism but
friction
to
keep the 'connector' in place. Entirely inadequate. It is not
designed
for
repeated make/break insertion/removal. If subjected even to a low
number
of
such operations (design spec is 50), it will fail. (5 000 for an
eSATA
connector). If I have to repeatedly disconnect-connect a drive
during
testing, I replace the cable as a matter of routine."

I am interested in knowing whether others have encountered this
problem
and how common place it is?

TIA


--


Gerry
~~~~
FCA
Stourport, England
Enquire, plan and execute
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~