The PATA hard drive is no longer commonly used, except in some older PCs. The new SATA and PCIe interfaces have been replacing these to bring more speed, among other advantages. In this article you will be able to learn more about the PATA interface and a little about its history, versions, features, etc.
Index of contents
- What is ATA?
- PATA hard drives
- Leg versions
- Hard-drive sata
- Beyond hard drives
What is ATA?
The ATA interface stands for Advanced Technologies Attachment for IDE Devices. This interface uses the ATAPI (ATA Packet Interface) standard , that is, a protocol that is now used by PATA and SATA drives and that can connect a variety of computer devices in a similar way to the old and expensive SCSI.
PATA hard drives
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The PATA or Parallel ATA interface , originally known as IDE, was an interface standard for connecting storage media, both massive and optical, among others. It is a derivative of ATA, and also uses the ATAPI standard.
The first version of the PATA interface was developed by Western Digital in collaboration with CDC and Compaq Computer for these same computers from these latter firms. ATA controllers only had to be integrated into the motherboard where the device was connected. Then came other controllers that bundled ATA and the floppy drive interface into one, as well as parallel, RS-232, and other ports for connecting various types of components.
The terms IDE (Integrated device Electronics), EIDE (Enhanced IDE) and ATA, nowadays PATA, have been used as synonyms since they were generally compatible with each other.
This interface was used until 2003 , when they gave way to new SATA drives, faster and with advantages over PATA.
Leg versions
Regarding the versions , there were several revisions to improve the technology and get new features and speeds:
- PATA-1: it was the first version, with a speed of 8MB/s.
- PATA-2:similar to the previous one, but with DMA and support for block transfers for greater speed.
- PATA-3: Itis a revised ATA-2 with speeds of up to 16 MB/s, doubling the speed of the previous ones.
- PATA-4:It was also known as UltraDMA or UDMA and even ATA-33, since it reached transfer speeds of 33MB/s.
- PATA-5:also known as Ultra ATA/66, it was proposed by Quantum and with transfers of 66 MB/s.
- PATA-6:This Ultra ATA/100 supports speeds of 100 MB/s.
- PATA-7:The Ultra ATA/133 supports speeds of 133 MB/s.
- PATA-8:or Ultra ATA/166, it can reach up to 166 MB/s.
Hard-drive sata
Serial ATA, or SATA , is a new bus interface for computers that has improved the transfer rate of PATA. This new interface began to be used for hard drives, and gradually replaced SCSI and PATA for their advantages. In addition, over time it was also extended to other types of drives, such as optical storage media, such as CD/DVD readers and burners , and others.
SATA began its journey with the creation of a group to create the new generations of ATA specifications in 2001 . The first of all of them would appear in 2003, at which time PATA hard drives were in decline. This new generation transmitted data serially, but achieved higher speeds. Specifically, according to the specification, the following have been achieved:
- SATA I or SATA 1.0– This interface reached speeds of 1.5 Gb/s.
- SATA II or SATA 2.0– Improved to reach 3 Gb/s.
- SATA III or SATA 3.0: in this case the speed was doubled again to reach 6 Gb/s.
In addition, there are some reviews of these .
Beyond hard drives
In addition to disk drives , these interfaces also served other drives, such as optical drives. If you remember the time when PATA disappeared and SATA hard drives came into use, optical drives still used PATA for a while longer. So, to install the operating system, which lacked a SATA driver at the time, like Windows XP, they needed to load the driver onto a floppy disk in order to recognize the hard drive. Then native drivers were included in the operating system and this cumbersome practice was no longer necessary. You remember?