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Perhaps you should update your lovely Wikipedia page, because it is outdated.

SATA 3.1 standard note at techreport
Webopedia info on SATA 3.x
Wikipedia's own entry on SATA 3.1
TechPowerUp article about SATA 3.1

Here's a press release from sata-io about it: in PDF format

Not only does TRIM via NCQ exist, it is in the recent specifications. You see, the thing about computer technology is that it keeps being improved. Outdated information doesn't stop that. It just becomes outdated.

Citation Please.

In truth current gen PCIe SSDs appear to the OS as a PCIe bus connected AHCI controller with a single disk that supports TRIM. There makes it completely transparent... it works exactly the same as a SATA SSD from a software perspective.

Pretty soon we will start seeing next gen PCIe SSDs that expose themselves as an NVMe controller instead of an AHCI controller. Those SSDs will be backwards incompatible with AHCI but the command protocol and DMA interface enables extreme parallism so we will see pretty incredible performance for those SSDs. From a software stack perspective they use a new NVMe host controller and a new command set (ATA commands are completely gone!) So you need new drivers for it. They have OSS Win7/8/8.1 drivers available for NVMe but due to kernel limitations only the Win8/8.1 version of the driver is capable of supporting TRIM (Maybe that is where you got confused.) Win8.1 also have a NVMe driver in-box from Microsoft.

Don't worry though, AHCI PCIe/SATA Express SSDs will be with use for a very long time esp. since Win7 is rapidly turning in to the next WinXP (the version that everyone likes and uses despite Microsoft's best efforts.)

A good SSD will do 600MB/s read which is 5gbit not including protocol overhead. Add on the 100MB/s writes and you've used up your 6gbit.

This is a known problem. The SATA standard people have basically said "fuck it, just use PCIe" and I'm not even kidding.

A good SSD will do 600MB/s read which is 5gbit not including protocol overhead. Add on the 100MB/s writes and you've used up your 6gbit.

This is a known problem. The SATA standard people have basically said "fuck it, just use PCIe" and I'm not even kidding.

Royalty? It's SATA Express. http://www.sata-io.org/technology/sataexpress.asp

SATA is not going to 12 Gbps. Going from 6 to 12 Gbps is a huge leap, and requires quite a bit of extra electrical training, which has been defined for SAS, but not for SATA. The next generation of SAS controllers will support SAS at 12 Gbps, and SATA at 6 Gbps.

Instead, T13 has decided to move to a pure PCIe based model called "SATA Express". This uses either AHCI, which current operating systems will interpret as a SATA controller attached to a single hard drive, or "NVM Express", which is a completely new protocol which is intended for use in high-performance servers.

Apple is simply jumping the gun on the new technology.

SATA I doesnt allow native command queueing among other things. It's not about the 1.5 vs 3, its about the additional features that SATA II offers.

You've just repeated three very widespread wrong ideas people have about SATA.

1. NCQ was in the original SATA spec. It was (and still is) an optional feature.

2. There is no "SATA II". Don't believe me? Believe the people who define SATA: http://sata-io.org/developers/naming_guidelines.asp

3. SATA capabilities are not tied to the speed the serial link operates at. Even if NCQ hadn't been around from the start, it would be possible to use NCQ on a 1.5Gbps SATA link so long as both sides implemented NCQ.

this seems clearly aimed at providing a long reach version of sata at 3Gb/s (Gigabits not GigaBytes per second). Incidentally, too many people call the higher speed sata "SataII" which is somewhat incorrect - sataII means a whole slew of features over and above the first version say Sata IO Org. Note that 3Gbps means 3 x 10^9, not 3 x 1024^3.

And of course, MMC has already been stillborn for years. It's used by experimenters because the standard is slightly easier than SD to implement, but with dedicated chips to handle the grunt work, there's again no use for MMC. CF is slipping because the zillion-pin connector is too bulky. SD is still going strong with the introduction of SDHC, though the fact that the original standard puked at the 2GB mark is pretty embarassing.

However, USB's speed limit is going to become an issue pretty soon. What would be nice is a physical box size for SATA memory sticks. They're going to happen anyway, but if they all happen with different shapes (like USB memory sticks), you won't be able to design a camera or mp3 player that uses them as internal storage.

I've written to the SATA folks to ask them to define such a physical memory stick standard. If you think it's a good idea, please do the same.

SATA II is the old name of the organisation that created the SATA standard (although I can't find what the acronym used to stand for). It has since changed its name to SATA-IO ("International Organisation") because everyone mistook the two I's as Roman numerals and assumed the newly created SATA 3Gb/s standard was "version 2" of SATA. It's not. It's just a new signalling rate and other features like NCQ are separate.

• SATA-IO: Dispelling the Confusion: SATA II does not mean 3Gb/s
• Anandtech: What's in a name? SATA II Misconceptions

3Gb/s is wrong
3Gb/s = 3 Gigabits per second = 384 MB/s = 384 MegaBytes per second
The spec is:
300 MB/s = 300 MegaBytes per second = 2.344 Gb/s = 2.344 Gigabits per second
Spec: http://www.sata-io.org/esata.asp
Calculator

I would agree; the permanent absence of FW800 is news (even though that missed the headline). I just bought a triple-interface HD in hopes that my next 12" Power(Mac?)Book would sport FW800. The studio I work at is outfitted with FW800, and there is a very significant real-world difference between it and the older spec.

This market is likely to be taken over by external SATA, or eSATA. You can read about it here. With no overhead in converting to SATA and a much higher cap to begin with, it is likely to be the solution for external high-performance storage. Firewire is still limited by the fact that both current DV and newer HDV cameras don't need FW800 for live playback. On the low end, USB is the standard for anything for keyboard, mice and everything else (with some competition from the PS/2 port). In short, FW800 is a technology looking for a market and the market just isn't there.

b) who knows what type of external storage the box will ever support in practice.

The E-SATA kind. External sata is a simple pin thru for the data cable.
that means any power brick that can hook up to a SATA drive, and Any Sata drive, and a SATA cable are all you need. E-SATA requires no bridge controller, it's a direct pin thru to the drive.

so in practice, I'd say the 200 GB SATA drive i have sitting on the shelf in the room is Tivo HD series 3 compatable, since I have an old firewire drive bay that i can use a SATA power converter on, and then plug any sheilded e-SATA cable straight into the e-sata connecter on the new tivo hd series 3 and it will likely ask me if i want to 'bless' the new drive, and if i say so, it's now a tivo drive.

http://www.sata-io.org/esata.asp

Shouldn't these be called SATA-IO drives? http://www.sata-io.org/namingguidelines.asp

I'm a late comer to the SATA world... are all SATA drives/controllers compatible or do you need a newer SATA controller to use SATA 300MB/s?

Further, what about this NCQ? Does the SATA controller have to support it? What if it doesn't?

And how do you determine if your SATA controller will support the features?

I scanned the http://www.sata-io.org/ site including the Naming Guidlines, but w/out digging into the specs, it was not clear to me.

Thanks.

Steve

THERE IS NO SATA II.

There is a new 3GB/s speed, and there is also NCQ, but there is no "SATA II" specification.

Read for yourself:

http://www.sata-io.org/namingguidelines.asp

As for the new 3GB/s speed and NCQ, Maxtor's DiamondMax 10 and Seagate's 7200.8 both support it.

These features include as backplane support with higher voltages (FR4 fiberglass insulation of circuit boards is more lossy at GHz bitrates than plastic used in the cables), port multipliers (connecting several drives), port selector (redundant communication channels), native command queuing and other features mostly targeted at the high end server market.

The 3 Gb/s (gigabits/sec) speed was actually part of the original 1.0a spec. The speeds 1.5 Gb/s, 3.0 Gb/s and 6.0 Gb/s are refered to as "Gen 1, Gen 2 and Gen 3".

So it's natural to confuse "Gen 2" as mentioned in the 1.0a spec with the revision "II" spec which actually adds features and not increased speed.

I don't understand. When SATA was first announced as a competitor to Firewire, all the anything-but-apple proponents said the reason it was so wonderful and necessary was that it would be completely compatible with ATA, no need for new drivers, isn't that wonderful. The SATA standard itself says that a SATA card must emulate an ATA device (master only, optionally emulate master/slave). So how can it be that these devices don't just work right out of the box, with full support for SATA required for higher speed, maybe higher capacity, but otherwise just plain working?

The whole interconnect wars is just plain stupid. It was stupid back when it was Apple and SCSI vs. IBM PC and various standards, eventually IDE and EIDE, then ATAPI (which is just SCSI over IDE). Now we have Firewire (which is sort of SCSI over serial), SATA (which is ATA over serial, so with ATAPI that makes it ... SCSI over serial), and of course Serial Attached SCSI (which is SCSI over a serial link). WTF??? Let's not even talk about USB, which started off as a slow-speed bus but is now trying to compete with all of the above as well. So now we get hard drives which do USB 2.0 and Firewire (400? 800?) as external drives, and along comes, TADA, EXTERNAL SATA.

So the modern computer will have Firewire 800, USB 2, serial attached SCSI (which can handle SATA as well), Gigabit Ethernet - how many standards do we need for transmitting bits!??

"That's the nice thing about standards - there are so many to choose from, and if you don't like any of those, you can always create your own new standard!"