Serial ATA (SATA, abbreviated from Serial AT Attachment)^[2] 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.

Serial ATA industry compatibility specifications originate from the Serial ATA International Organization (SATA-IO) which are then promulgated by the INCITS T13 subcommittee ATA Attachment

 

The Serial ATA Spec requires SATA device hot plugging; that is, devices that meet the specification are capable of insertion / removal of a device into / from a backplane connector (combined signal and power) that has power on. After insertion, the device initializes and then operates normally. Depending upon the operating system the host may also initialize resulting in a hot swap. The powered host or device are not necessarily in a quiescent state.

Unlike PATA, both SATA and eSATA support hotplugging by design. However, this feature requires proper support at the host, device (drive), and operating-system levels. In general, all SATA devices (drives) support hotplugging (due to the requirements on the device-side), also most SATA host adapters support this function.^[1]

For eSATA function, Hot Plug function is supported in AHCI mode only. IDE mode does not support Hot Plug function.^[9]