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 older Parallel ATA (PATA) standard. SATA offers several advantages over the original PATA interface in that it offers reduced cable size and reduced cost by using seven conductors instead of 40 or 80 pins. SATA also adds native hot swapping, faster data transfer through higher signaling rates and more efficient transfer through (optional) I/O queuing protocols.