Storage Interface Standards
All Storage Interface standard versions with speeds, features, and compatibility.
Storage interface standards define how storage devices communicate with host systems. SATA III (6 Gbps) serves traditional HDDs and SATA SSDs, while NVMe over PCIe 4.0/5.0 delivers 7-14 GB/s for modern SSDs. SAS (Serial Attached SCSI) provides enterprise reliability with dual-port failover. The NVMe-oF (NVMe over Fabrics) specification extends NVMe performance across network fabrics for disaggregated storage architectures.
NVMe 1.0
6/10Non-Volatile Memory Express over PCIe, purpose-built for SSDs. Dramatically lower latency and higher throughput than AHCI/SATA. Supports up to 64K queues with 64K commands each.
NVMe 2.0
9/10Modular NVMe spec adding Zoned Namespaces, Key-Value commands, and computational storage. Supports PCIe 5.0 x4 for up to 14 GB/s sequential reads on cutting-edge SSDs.
SATA I (1.5 Gbps)
1/10First-generation Serial ATA at 1.5 Gbps (150 MB/s). Replaced Parallel ATA with a thinner cable and hot-swap support. Adequate for early HDDs but bottlenecks modern …
FireWire S3200 (IEEE 1394-2008)
1/10Final FireWire spec reaching 3.2 Gbps using the same 9-pin connector as FireWire 800. Never saw meaningful adoption as Thunderbolt arrived shortly after.
FireWire 400 (IEEE 1394a)
1/10Apple-championed 400 Mbps interface predating USB 2.0. Sustained throughput and peer-to-peer topology made it the standard for DV video and pro audio.
FireWire 800 (IEEE 1394b)
1/10Doubled FireWire speed to 800 Mbps with a new 9-pin connector. Popular on Mac Pro towers for external drives and pro audio. Backward compatible with …
SATA II (3 Gbps)
2/10Doubled SATA bandwidth to 3 Gbps (300 MB/s). Added Native Command Queuing (NCQ) for improved random I/O. Sufficient for spinning hard drives but bottlenecks SSDs.
SATA III (6 Gbps)
4/10Current-gen SATA at 6 Gbps (600 MB/s). The final SATA revision. Adequate for SATA SSDs (~550 MB/s real-world) but NVMe has taken over for high-performance …