Serial ATA in Mini Format: 2.5" Disk Drive from Fujitsu

Laptops With Serial ATA - The Outlook

On a laptop, you can integrate the Serial ATA interface on the board in such a way that installation of the hard drive involves little more than pushing it into its slot and then covering it with a plate at the side. This would save time and money in production and allow very fast drive swapping.

If a laptop is shared by several people, each of them could use his own, personal hard disk - a feature that would prove very cost-effective for companies where not everyone needs a laptop all the time. With this type of design, a second hard disk slot would not be out of the question.

Test Controller - Promise SATA150-TX2

Fujitsu supplied a suitable controller with the drive. The company clearly wanted to make sure we could get their new drive up and running. It remains to be seen what the reasons were.

The model number of the SATA150-TX2 more or less describes the device itself. Two Serial ATA units can be connected directly, and there is also a conventional IDE connector, which can be used for a third and fourth drive.

An increasing number of adapters are appearing in stores, adapters which use a bridge chip to allow Serial ATA drives to be connected to parallel IDE controllers. If such an adapter is used, it is possible to run four Serial ATA drives with the SATA150-TX2.

At the heart of this controller is the PDC20375. Unlike the 20376 version, this model does not include RAID modes.