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The Curious Bag
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Installing a SATA (Serial ATA) hard drive is easy compared to the bad old days of ribbon cables and jumper settings that accompanied IDE--or Parallel ATA--hard drives.
Basic Requirements
Most motherboards built since 2003 have SATA support. If your motherboard lacks SATA support, or if all of its SATA ports are in use, it's easy enough to install an add-in card.
Power Supplies
Most modern power supplies use standard SATA power connecters. Even power supplies that only have the old Molex 4-pin connectors can still be used by using a Molex to SATA power adapter.
Cabling
Unlike PATA ribbon cables, SATA cables only support one device per cable.
Laptop Drives
It's possible to install a laptop drive in a desktop computer because laptop and desktop sized SATA hard drives use the same connectors. Aftermarket drive cages can be purchased that allow you to properly screw in a laptop drive.
External SATA
If your motherboard has a E-SATA (External SATA) port, you can buy an E-SATA external hard drive enclosure to which to connect the drive if you've run out of space in your computer case.
Source:
Seagate: How To Install and Troubleshoot Serial ATA (SATA) Hard Drives
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