SATA is a computer bus interface that connects host bus adapters to mass storage devices such as hard disk drives, optical drives, and solid-state drives. Serial ATA succeeded the earlier Parallel ATA (PATA) standard to become the predominant interface for storage devices.
A 3.5-inch Serial ATA hard disk drive
A 2.5-inch Serial ATA solid-state drive
SATA 6 Gbit/s host controller, a PCI Express ×1 card with Marvell chipset
SATA 2 connectors on a computer motherboard, all but two with cables plugged in. Note that there is no visible difference, other than the labeling, between SATA 1, SATA 2, and SATA 3 cables and connectors.
In computer architecture, a bus is a communication system that transfers data between components inside a computer, or between computers. This expression covers all related hardware components and software, including communication protocols.
Four PCI Express bus card slots (from top to second from bottom: ×4, ×16, ×1 and ×16), compared to a 32-bit conventional PCI bus card slot (very bottom)