Serial ATA In Laptops: An Interview With Chuck Nielsen
We wondered what the reasoning was behind a 2.5" hard disk with Serial ATA interface. To clarify the matter, we turned to Chuck Nielsen from Fujitsu:
THG: Your drives made clear that Fujitsu ist ready for Serial ATA. Will there be 3.5" IDE drives again or is your effort simply meant to stay up-to-date technologically?
CHUCK: No. We are not interested in re-entering the desktop market.
THG: We would like to know if there is a market for 2.5" Serial ATA drives. Is there a customer that already asked for such hard drives?
CHUCK: We are getting a lot of calls from rack/storage companies. I don't have any specific names now, but companies seem very interested.
THG: When do you expect Serial ATA to replace conventional ATA in the mobile sector?
CHUCK: Maybe 2004/2005
At the moment, we are working on producing more accurate forecasts of the demand for these drives. Currently, Serial ATA drives offer no benefits apart from ease of installation. The new interface alone does not provide any increase in performance. We felt that their use in laptops would be beneficial. The conventional Micro IDE interface with its 40 pins has a number of disadvantages. For one thing, pins are vulnerable to bending when not handled carefully. And for another, the drive is nearly always connected using a ribbon cable, which takes up space, costs money and is awkward to fit.
