SATA (Serial ATA) – First generation (1.5 Gbit/s) SATA ports on a motherboard. Serial ATA) is a computer bus technology, in computer hardware, primarily designed for transfer of data to and from optical drives and hard disks. It was designed as a successor to the legacy Advanced Technology Attachment standard (ATA), and is expected to eventually replace the older technology (retroactively renamed Parallel ATA or PATA). Serial ATA adapters and devices communicate over a high-speed serial link.