SATA drives have become the de facto standard for PCs, although SATA optical drives are still few and far between. A new connector for SATA optical drives was introduced, allowing them to be built into SFF PCs. This seems to be fairly important, as the there really isn't a formal category for SFF-qualified optical drives—a DVD-RW drive is a DVD-RW drive, if you get my meaning.

Additionally, the committee added support for two new connectors: one for 1.8-inch drives for really small form-factor PCs, and a mini SATA internal/external connector for multiple lanes. The latter is just a complicated name for a slimmer, higher-bandwidth external SATA (eSATA) connector—which, although it's designed solely for external storage, gives a nice bandwidth boost versus the ubiquitous USB external drives.

Post by Mark Hachman