Is SATA 7 or 15 pins?

Question

I'm doing A+ practice exams.

One of the questions reads

The SATA standard defines data cable connector consisting of:

40 pins

34 pins

15 pins

7 pins

I chose 15 pins. It was wrong. The correct answer was 7.

Am I not understanding the question right? Or is their answer invalid?

Solution

Is SATA 7 or 15 pins?

The SATA standard defines data cable connector consisting of:

• 40 pins

• 34 pins

• 15 pins

• 7 pins

I chose 15 pins. It was wrong. The correct answer was 7.

• A SATA data cable has 7 pins.

• A SATA power cable has 15 pins.

---

Data connector

The SATA standard defines a data cable with seven conductors (3 grounds and 4 active data lines in two pairs) and 8 mm wide wafer connectors on each end.

---

Power connectors

SATA specifies a different power connector than the decades-old four-pin Molex connector used on Parallel ATA (PATA) devices. It is a wafer-type connector, like the SATA data connector, but much wider (15 pins versus seven) to avoid confusion between the two. Some early SATA drives included the old 4-pin Molex power connector together with the new 15-pin connector, but most SATA drives now have only the latter.

Source Serial ATA