Serial ATA Promises Big Performance

The first ATA hard drives appeared on the scene in the late 1980's, and have evolved into the latest ATA100 and ATA133 standards. Also known as IDE (for integrated drive electronics), the ATA standard has gone through a number of iterations. Today's ATA hard drives max out at 133MB/sec (Maxtor) and 100MB/sec (everyone else). The original ATA standard specified a connection speed of 3.3MB/sec. Early ATA drives offered 10-40MB of storage - a staggering amount at the time, but completely useless for most PC applications today. Capacities have evolved along with connection speeds, and we now have 320GB ATA drives available. However, today's hard drives still use an interconnect standard that's over fifteen years old, even as capacities and drive technologies have progressed.

More at ExtremeTech