What Are ATA Hard Drives?

Early hard drives for PCs were called Advanced Technology Attachment (ATA) and also known as Integrated Drive Electronics (IDE) drives after the interface used in the computer. These drives were the first major enhancement broadening the use of personal computers.

History

ATA hard drives were the first internal multi-megabyte data storage devices available for personal computers. These drives were first mounted with the IBM PC/AT, which came out in 1984.

Function

ATA and later hard drives allow for storage of many application programs as well as data, which was not possible with the limited size of floppy drives.

Features

The original ATA drives were able to transfer data at a rate of 3.3 Mb/s. Enhanced models increased this speed gradually until they finally reached 133 Mb/s.

Identification

Besides the label on the drive's face, ATA/IDE drives can be identified by the type of connector running from the drive to the computer, which is a wide, flat parallel type cable with 40 or 80 pins at each end.

Warning

Even larger hard drives holding megabytes or now gigabytes of information require correspondingly larger backup systems--otherwise hard drive failure can have catastrophic information losses.