Seagate ST500LM021 - 1 Introduction; About the Serial ATA Interface

Seagate Laptop Thin HDD Product Manual, Rev. E 6
1.0 Introduction
This manual describes the functional, mechanical and interface specifications for the following Seagate
®
Laptop Thin HDD model drives:
For more information on SED drives see About (SED) Self-Encrypting Drives on page 22.
For more information on FIPS 140-2 Level 2 certification see About FIPS on page 21.
These drives provide the following key features:
 7200-RPM spindle speed.
 32MB buffer.
 Quiet operation. Fluid Dynamic Bearing (FDB) motor.
 High instantaneous (burst) data-transfer rates (up to 6Gb/s).
 Perpendicular recording technology.
 State-of-the-art cache and on-the-fly error-correction algorithms.
 Native Command Queuing (NCQ) with command ordering.
 Full-track multiple-sector transfer capability without local processor intervention.
 1000 Gs nonoperating shock and 400 Gs of operating shock.
 SeaTools
TM
diagnostic software performs a drive self-test that eliminates unnecessary drive returns.
 The 3D Defense System™, which includes Drive Defense, Data Defense and Diagnostic Defense,
offers the industry’s most comprehensive protection for disk drives.
 Support for S.M.A.R.T. drive monitoring and reporting.
 Support for Read Multiple and Write Multiple commands.
 Worldwide Name (WWN) capability uniquely identifies the drive.
1.1 About the Serial ATA Interface
The Serial ATA interface provides several advantages over the traditional (parallel) ATA interface. The primary advantages include:
 Easy installation and configuration with true plug-and-play connectivity. It is not necessary to set any jumpers or other configuration
options.
 Thinner and more flexible cabling for improved enclosure airflow and ease of installation.
 Scalability to higher performance levels.
In addition, Serial ATA makes the transition from parallel ATA easy by providing legacy software support. Serial ATA was designed to allow
users to install a Serial ATA host adapter and Serial ATA disk drive in the current system and expect all of the existing applications to work
as normal.
The Serial ATA interface connects each disk drive in a point-to-point configuration with the Serial ATA host adapter. There is no master/
slave relationship with Serial ATA devices like there is with parallel ATA. If two drives are attached on one Serial ATA host adapter, the host
operating system views the two devices as if they were both “masters” on two separate ports. This essentially means both drives behave
as if they are Device 0 (master) devices.
The Serial ATA host adapter and drive share the function of emulating parallel ATA device behavior to provide backward compatibility with
existing host systems and software. The Command and Control Block registers, PIO and DMA data transfers, resets, and interrupts are all
emulated.
The Serial ATA host adapter contains a set of registers that shadow the contents of the traditional device registers, referred to as the
Shadow Register Block. All Serial ATA devices behave like Device 0 devices. For additional information about how Serial ATA emulates
parallel ATA, refer to the Serial ATA International Organization: Serial ATA (Revision 3.2). The specification can be downloaded from
www.serialata.org.
Standard models Self-Encryption models SED FIPS 140-2 models
ST500LM021 - 1KJ152 ST500LM023 - 1RR152 ST500LM024 - 1RS152
ST320LM010 - 1KJ15C
Note
Previous generations of Seagate Self-Encrypting Drive models were
called Full Disk Encryption (FDE) models before a differentiation between
drive-based encryption and other forms of encryption was necessary.
Note
The host adapter may, optionally, emulate a master/slave environment to host software where two devices
on separate Serial ATA ports are represented to host software as a Device 0 (master) and Device 1 (slave)
accessed at the same set of host bus addresses. A host adapter that emulates a master/slave environment
manages two sets of shadow registers. This is not a typical Serial ATA environment.