Tweakers: A year ago Tweakers.net published a review of four Serial ATA RAID-adapters, which were the first flock of a new era on workstation- and server storage. The once dominant SCSI interface is being pushed to fewer niches by the cheaper alternatives based on Serial ATA technology. Since our previous SATA RAID-roundup Serial ATA has continued its way into business and consumer markets.

The introduction of new disks, controllers and (storage) systems is met with great interest of buyers in both desktop, workstation and server segments. Serial ATA is an accepted standard in midrange and high-end desktops, workstations and certain server appliances by now. In the recent Wave 4 investigation of TheInfoPro (TIP) Serial ATA was once more on the first place within the "Technology Heat Index". This index is a ranking of the current and upcoming use of more than 20 different storage technologies, ranked on short-term expenses and based on polls filled in by 150 to 250 decisionmakers (selected on expertise) of big companies. The most recent study concluded that by now 40 percent of those polled are using ATA disks by now. Said usage mostly consists of near-line storage, often implemented in what is called "tiered storage" where ATA-hard disks are being used as temporary storage before the data is written to tape.

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