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1.6.3
Serial ATA Interfaces
The board's Serial ATA controller offers four independent Serial ATA ports with a
theoretical maximum transfer rate of 3 Gbits/s per port. One device can be installed
on each port for a maximum of four Serial ATA devices. A point-to-point interface is
used for host to device connections, unlike Parallel ATA IDE which supports a
master/slave configuration and two devices per channel.
For compatibility, the underlying Serial ATA functionality is transparent to the
operating system. The Serial ATA controller can operate in both legacy and native
modes. In legacy mode, standard IDE I/O and IRQ resources are assigned (IRQ 14
and 15). In Native mode, standard PCI Conventional bus resource steering is used.
Native mode is the preferred mode for configurations using the Windows* XP
operating system.
NOTE
Many Serial ATA drives use new low-voltage power connectors and require adapters or
power supplies equipped with low-voltage power connectors.
For more information, see:
For information about
The location of the Serial ATA connectors
http://www.serialata.org/
Product Description
Refer to
Figure 10, page 44
21
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