Ready to upgrade your hard drive and found you're dealing with a SATA connector? SATA drives are easy to set up, support hot swapping, and the interface is reasonably fast. We'll show you everything you need to know about installing a SATA drive, and how to connect the power and data cable.

What Are SATA Drives

Frontal look at the connections of a modern 2.5" SATA hard drive.
Image credit: Arkadiusz Sikorski/Flickr, CC BY 2.0

Serial ATA (SATA) connectors remain a common interface between the drive and the motherboard. The image above shows a 2.5" SATA hard drive from Fujitsu with the data port on the left and the power port on the right. On older SATA drives, you might also see a 4-pin Molex power connector. You'll find SATA interfaces in both hard drisk drives (HDDs) and solid state drives (SSDs).

SATA drives were introduced to replace IDE and Enhanced IDE (Parallel ATA) drives. SATA removes the master-slave relationship between parallel hard drives, with each drive connecting to the motherboard using its own SATA adapter.

As well as a specific port, SATA offers substantial improvements in data transfer rates. The original SATA specification transfers data at speeds up to 150 MB/s. The latest revision, SATA 3.5, transfers data at speeds up to 1,969 MB/s (1.969 GB/s), enables active drive temperature monitoring, and better integrates with industry I/O standards. While the latest SATA iteration isn't in use for consumer drives, the technology does eventually filter into those products.

Should You Get a SATA or PCI Express SSD?

Solid State Drives sales have rapidly increased throughout the past few years, from around 39 million units in 2012 to an estimated 360 million in 2021. With SSDs, you can choose between two types of connectors: SATA and PCI Express (PCIe). Wondering which one is right for you? And do you need an SSD at all?

Consider your use case: If you need a large amount of storage at an affordable price and don't plan on using it as an everyday drive running your operating system, i.e. it doesn't need to be ultra-fast, then a regular HDD drive is the right choice. In that case, you'll want a connection compatible with your motherboard, most likely SATA. If you're looking for the fastest possible drive and neither price nor storage capacity are an issue, consider an SSD and check whether your computer has a PCIe slot.

Note that SATA SSDs are only available in the smaller 2.5" form factor. In addition to non-ultrabook laptops, that also makes them ideal as external drives.

1. Hard Drive Installation Safety Guidelines

Before installing a new hard drive, take the following precautions to prevent damaging your hardware.

Turn the Power Off

Before you open the case and begin fiddling with the hardware, shut your system down. Then turn off the mains power switch. You'll find the switch at the back of your case. Once turned off, hold the power button down for a few seconds to discharge any remaining power.

Ground Yourself

Electrostatic shock can wreck your drive as soon as you take it out of its packaging. An electrostatic shock comes from a static energy build-up in your body. As you touch the metallic case of the drive, you transfer that energy, which can then fry vital components. Luckily, most new hardware arrives in an anti-static bag and should come with a handling warning, too. Moreover, some modern components have integrated anti-shock technology that should prevent hardware damage from an unexpected static shock.

But just because your drive has shock protection, it doesn't mean you shouldn't be wary of affecting other hardware components. The easiest way to protect your hardware is to ground yourself. Touch a metal table leg or the case of your computer (do this after discharging your motherboard, as described above).

Alternatively, buy an anti-static wristband.

2. SATA DATA and Power Connectors

This article assumes you have a modern motherboard that no longer has IDE connectors. IDE drives haven't featured in consumer computers for some time. The overwhelming majority of computers and motherboards sold in recent years will focus solely on SATA drives (with a few exceptions, of course). Let's familiarize ourselves with the SATA connector and port.

Both HDDs and SSDs use SATA connectors, so there is nothing to distinguish between the two drive inputs. Your SATA cable will have two connectors, like so:

SATA data and power cables plugged into a hard drive.
Image credit: CyberVam/Shutterstock

The left connector is for data (typically a red cable), while the second powers your drive. It is possible to buy an all-in-one, 22-pin SATA cable that combines both connectors (but is less flexible).

Your motherboard will have ports like these available:

Two SATA connection ports on a motherboard.
Image credit: culture_blue/Shutterstock

Should you find that you don’t have a Serial ATA connector available, you can upgrade your motherboard with a SATA PCIe card. Make sure you have a PCIe slot available on your motherboard. PCIe slots come in different variants, such as PCIEX16 or PCI2. You should find the exact name printed next to the slot on your motherboard.

Asus P5Q Premium motherboard with PCIe slots.
Image credit: Forrestal_PL/Flickr, CC BY 2.0

It isn't a case of forcing two SATA connectors into one SATA slot via an adapter. It just doesn't work that way. In those cases, a PCIe SATA adapter is the best option to immediately grant extra SATA slots (followed by upgrading your motherboard or PC).

3. SATA Data and Power Cables

Your new HDD or SSD probably arrived with at least its interface cable (the red cable in our example images above and below). But your drive also needs power. That power usually comes in the form of a 4-pin Molex power connector with a SATA drive specific connector. The below image is a 4-pin Molex SATA power cable:

SATA 4-pin Molex power cable for hard drives.
Image credit: Pavel Skopets/Shutterstock

A SATA HDD can arrive with a range of input connectors, allowing you to choose between a SATA power connector (the empty port to the left of the red interface cable, below) or 4-pin Molex connector (the cable on the far right, below). You can choose either one but not both at the same time!

Hard drive with SATA data and 4-pin Molex power cable plugged in and SATA power port unused.
Image credit: Dino Osmic/Shutterstock

A reader notes that you should "never use the Molex (4-pin) to SATA power adapter" because "most hard drives and solid state drives require the orange 3.3V wire to supply power for the drive electronics." This may cause the drives to fail at spinning up or registering in the computer's BIOS, Device Manager, or Disk Management. Thank you for the heads-up, Doc!

Consequently, some modern HDDs have done away with 4-pin Molex power inputs and now offer just a SATA power input. A SATA SSD will arrive with only a SATA power connector and a data transmission cable.

4. Installation Procedure

Installing a SATA drive is an easy procedure. The following video details the installation process for a desktop PC.

Changing the drive on your laptop is also an easy process. As there are numerous laptop makes and models, I would suggest heading to YouTube and searching for "[your laptop make and model] drive install."

5. Configuring Your Drive

Your existing setup might recognize the new drive if you're simply adding it for extra storage. But there is a chance it won't. If you install your drive and it doesn’t recognize it, right-click the Windows Start button and select disk management to use the Disk Management panel to bring your new drive to life.

Windows 10 Disk Management window with Disk 0 and Disk 1 shown.

Your unallocated drive should be visible on a separate row. If it is an entirely new drive, it will appear as Unknown and Not Initialized. Initialize the drive using the following steps.

  1. Right-click the uninitialized drive and select Initialize disk.
  2. Select MBR (Master Boot Record) for a drive smaller than 2TB, and GPT (GUID Partition Table) for a drive larger than 2TB.
  3. Once initialized, right-click the newly Unallocated space and select New Simple Volume.
  4. Choose the Volume Size. If you're using the whole drive, leave the default allocation. If you're planning more than one partition, allocate the volume size as you see fit. Hit Next.
  5. Assign a drive letter using the drop-down. Your existing drives will not be listed. Hit Next.
  6. Select a file system. It is recommended to use NTFS with Windows 10. Add a Volume label, and make sure Perform a quick format is unchecked. Hit Next.
  7. Hit Finish.

Windows 10 will promptly create a new partition and format the drive ready for use. If you're wondering why I specified unchecking the quick format option, here's why: a quick format doesn't check the drive for errors or damage. It is preferable to uncover any errors or damage at this stage, rather than when you're trying to upload data or install an operating system.

Configuring Your BIOS

You might not have to make any changes to your PC or laptop BIOS. However, if your computer doesn't detect the new drive by default certain BIOS settings will require a tweak. Since BIOS options aren't standardized, I can only offer vague guidelines here.

To launch the BIOS, you have to press a hardware specific key before the computer boots into Windows. The key is usually DEL, ESC, or F1, but it does vary by manufacturer. However, most systems display the correct button during the boot process, before Windows begins to load. Alternatively, consult our guide to entering the BIOS, including a list of commonly used keys by manufacturers.

Once you're in the BIOS, be careful not to change any unfamiliar options. You may need to toggle an option to "auto-detect new hardware," or specifically turn on the unused SATA port on the motherboard. Carefully check that each cable is well seated in its port at each end and that you haven't accidentally knocked other cables during the process.

Ready SATA Go

If you follow our guide, you should have your new drive up and running in no time and with ease.

Now what are you going to do with the old drive? Don't throw it out. Instead, find things to do with your old disk and get a great chunk of good use out of it, even if it's dead.

Image credit: Marco Verch/Flickr