Many existing external hard drives use USB and/or 1394. These interfaces are not nearly as fast as SATA when compared using peak values, and can compromise drive performance. Initially SATA was designed as an internal or inside-the-box interface technology, bringing improved performance and new features to internal PC or consumer storage. Creative designers quickly realized the innovative interface could reliably be expanded outside the PC, bringing the same performance and features to external storage needs instead of relying on USB or 1394 interfaces.