What Does EIDE Hard Drive Mean?
An Enhanced Integrated Drive Electronics (EIDE) drive is in the modern world more properly called the AT Attachment (ATA) drive. The name of the EIDE drive was introduced by Western Digital in 1994 in anticipation of the new ATA-2 protocol. Several other companies introduced their own versions of the new ATA interface with various enhancements, but Western Digital's idea was the one that caught on.
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What IDE Means
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Integrated Drive Electronics (IDE) is the base term defining EIDE. It was the first version put out by Western Digital in 1986 and used first in Compaq computers. The term IED meant that the electronic controller was integrated into the hard drive itself. This meant that drives could be more standardized and flexible. Before, they had to be matched to the corresponding controller on the motherboard. Now the motherboard could use a more universal controller called the ATA, because the cable was designed to attach to the PC/AT motherboard.
Drive Size Limits
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The original ATA specifications allowed for a 28-bit addressing mode which equated to a maximum limit on the hard drive storage of 137 gigabytes. Early Basic Input/Output System (BIOS) versions weren't able to see this size, and imposed smaller limitations in the eight-gigabyte range, but this was not a function of the ATA interface.
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ATA Connection
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The term EIDE and ATA are interchangeable for the most part, but ATA is the actual descriptive that refers to the type of connection and controller used. The EIDE refers to the physical construction of the drive. These have been matched for so long that both terms are used to refer to the same thing.
ATA/ATAPI
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Originally all hard drives were ATA drives or Small Computer Systems Interface (SCSI) drives, which is a more expensive bus-oriented interface. Optical drives changed the needs of the interface. Before, there was never a need for extra commands like Media Eject. That is the point at which the IDE / ATA protocols needed to be upgraded to the EIDE and AT Attachment Packet Interface(ATAPI). The ATA/ATAPI interface is the most common interface today.
Master and Slave
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Configuring a EIDE drive requires very little skill; there are only a few things to know. The controller will allow two devices on the cable. The devices have to be set to master and slave, designations that organize the attached drives into a C:drive and a D:drive seen by the computer. This can be done manually or it can be done with the use of what is called Cable Select (CS). On each drive there is a jumper that can be set to master, slave or CS. If you manually set the drives to master and slave, you can put them on either connection on the ribbon cable. If you use CS, the cable has a ground on pin 28 that the drive will see and know which position it is in.
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References
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