SAS vs SATA: What's the Difference?

In a SATA cable, all 4 wires are placed within the same cable. In a SAS cable, the 4 wires are separated into 2 different cables. This isn’t parallel technology; each cable still houses both an incoming and outgoing wire.

Why divide the wires between 2 cables? So you can connect more devices to one another. With a SATA cable, you can only link the motherboard and the storage drive. You could hook up an expansion device, but that takes up valuable room inside your computer.

With a SAS cable, you can hook up the motherboard to both a storage drive and another piece of hardware that has SAS connectors.

Here’s what the highways look like, metaphorically:

SATA cable: Los Angeles to San Francisco

SAS cable: Los Angeles to San Francisco or Los Angeles to Las Vegas

SAS and SATA are two technologies that are used to transfer information from the motherboard to a storage drive. Each hardware is built differently.

SAS is optimal for use in servers and workstations because it has a more versatile array of connectors and is faster at reading and writing data in a continuous computer session. SATA is better for storage purposes because it can write data very quickly, and the hardware is budget-friendly for small businesses.