The MHT20xxBH hard-drive series will be the first 2.5-inch Serial ATA drive on the market when it becomes available at the end of April, Fujitsu said. The company is aiming to sell two million of the units in the first year after launch.
Serial ATA is an Intel-backed initiative to create an inexpensive, fast technology for connecting hard disks connect to the PC. First-generation Serial ATA transfers data at 150 megabytes per second (MB/s), compared with the 100 MB/s of the ATA/100 standard currently found in most high-end desktops.
It is expected to be cheaper than the 133 MB/s ATA/133 standard and the 160 MB/s Ultra160 SCSI standard, and is software-compatible with existing software and BIOS.
Fujitsu's hard-disk series supports the Serial ATA II Phase I specification, with 150 MB/s transfer rate, and will be available in 40GB, 60GB and 80GB capacities. Spindle speed is 5,400 RPM and data density is 10.7 gigabits per square centimetre, or 69 gigabits per square inch, Fujitsu said.
Serial ATA has received a mixed response from industry observers, with some arguing that its benefits -- including faster speed, easier-to-use cabling and lower cost compared with SCSI -- amount to little more than an incremental upgrade.
Talkback
Last time I checked, Serial ATA was used for INTERNAL hard drives, and FireWire for EXTERNAL hard drives. I don't think there will be a lot of "encroachment" from Apple's FireWire on internal hard drives.
That, and Apple actually *uses* Serial ATA in its top-of-the-line G5 computers.
You are of course quite right, and we have removed the erroneous reference to FireWire.
Good call on pointing out that a FireWire &. Serial ATA don't really compete with each other. While I'm glad the editor removed it, how in the heck did the article's author come up with this idea in the first place? Most people familiar with current bus technologies know that Serial ATA is the successor to (& competes with) ATA/133, and is an internal only bus for connecting drives - compared to FireWire, which is designed for connecting not only external HD's, but digital camcorders, cameras, even other computers.
Not necessarily.
SATA 2.5" drives will originally only be used in external enclosures, from a SATA Cardbus adapter. Until the notebook makers and Intel work out how to integrate a SATA controller on a laptop motherboard, this will compete with portable firewire drives for laptops.
USB uses CPU to handle drive I/O, but 1394 and SATA are controller-managed.