page_title: Serial ATA
section_title: SATA Express
hierarchical_section_title: Serial ATA / Cables, connectors, and ports / SATA Express
caption_attribution_description: English: Two SATA Express connectors (light gray) on a computer motherboard (Asus X99-E WS); to the right of them are common SATA connectors (dark gray) Deutsch: Zwei SATA-Express-Buchsen (hellgrau) übereinander an einer PC-Hauptplatine (Asus X99-E WS); Rechts davon (dunkelgrau) vier herkömmliche SATA-Buchsen
context_page_description: Serial ATA 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 standard to become the predominant interface for storage devices.
  Serial ATA industry compatibility specifications originate from the Serial ATA International Organization which are then promulgated by the INCITS Technical Committee T13, AT Attachment.
context_section_description: SATA Express, initially standardized in the SATA 3.2 specification, is an interface that supports either SATA or PCI Express storage devices.  The host connector is backward compatible with the standard 3.5-inch SATA data connector, allowing up to two legacy SATA devices to connect.  At the same time, the host connector provides up to two PCI Express 3.0 lanes as a pure PCI Express connection to the storage device, allowing bandwidths of up to 2 GB/s.
  Instead of the otherwise usual approach of doubling the native speed of the SATA interface, PCI Express was selected for achieving data transfer speeds greater than 6 Gbit/s.  It was concluded that doubling the native SATA speed would take too much time, too many changes would be required to the SATA standard, and would result in a much greater power consumption when compared to the existing PCI Express bus.
  In addition to supporting legacy Advanced Host Controller Interface (AHCI), SATA Express also makes it possible for NVM Express (NVMe) to be used as the logical device interface for connected PCI Express storage devices.
  As M.2 form factor, described below, achieved much larger popularity, SATA Express is considered as a failed standard and dedicated ports quickly disappeared from motherboards.
caption: Two SATA Express connectors (light gray) on a computer motherboard; to the right of them are common SATA connectors (dark gray)
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