Seagate Enterprise Value manual Introduction, About the Sata interface

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1.0Introduction

This manual describes the functional, mechanical and interface specifications for the following Seagate Seagate® Terascale HDD model drives:

Model Number	Seagate Instant Secure Erase (ISE)
ST4000NC001	No
ST4000NC000	Yes

These drives provide the following key features:

•5900 RPM spindle speed.

•PowerChoice™ for selectable power savings

•High instantaneous (burst) data-transfer rates (up to 600MB per second).

•Perpendicular recording technology provides the drives with increased areal density.

•State-of-the-art cache and on-the-fly error-correction algorithms.

•Native Command Queueing with command ordering to increase performance in demanding applications.

•Full-track multiple-sector transfer capability without local processor intervention.

•SeaTools™ diagnostic software performs a drive self-test that eliminates unnecessary drive returns.

•Support for S.M.A.R.T. drive monitoring and reporting.

•Supports latching SATA cables and connectors.

•Worldwide Name (WWN) capability uniquely identifies the drive.

1.1About the SATA interface

The Serial ATA (SATA) interface provides several advantages over the traditional (parallel) ATA interface. The primary advantages include:

•Easy installation and configuration with true plug-and-play connectivity. It is not necessary to set any jumpers or other configuration options.

•Thinner and more flexible cabling for improved enclosure airflow and ease of installation.

•Scalability to higher performance levels.

In addition, SATA makes the transition from parallel ATA easy by providing legacy software support. SATA was designed to allow you to install a SATA host adapter and SATA disk drive in your current system and expect all of your existing applications to work as normal.

The SATA interface connects each disk drive in a point-to-point configuration with the SATA host adapter. There is no master/ slave relationship with SATA devices like there is with parallel ATA. If two drives are attached on one SATA host adapter, the host operating system views the two devices as if they were both “masters” on two separate ports. This essentially means both drives behave as if they are Device 0 (master) devices.

The host adapter may, optionally, emulate a master/slave environment to host software where two devices on

separate SATA ports are represented to host software as a Device 0 (master) and Device 1 (slave) accessed at

Note the same set of host bus addresses. A host adapter that emulates a master/slave environment manages two sets of shadow registers. This is not a typical SATA environment.

The SATA host adapter and drive share the function of emulating parallel ATA device behavior to provide backward compatibility with existing host systems and software. The Command and Control Block registers, PIO and DMA data transfers, resets, and interrupts are all emulated.

The SATA host adapter contains a set of registers that shadow the contents of the traditional device registers, referred to as the Shadow Register Block. All SATA devices behave like Device 0 devices. For additional information about how SATA emulates parallel ATA, refer to the “Serial ATA International Organization: Serial ATA Revision 3.0”. The specification can be downloaded from www.sata-io.org.

Seagate Terascale HDD Product Manual, Rev. B 2