Difference Between EIDE and IDE Hard Drives
Among older hard disk drives (HDDs), there are a few different standards. Integrated Device Electronics (IDE) and Enhanced Integrated Device Electronics (EIDE) are two such standards. However, IDE and EIDE are really two different Advanced Technology Attachment (ATA) standards.
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Where the Name IDE Comes From
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Before the IDE standard, HDDs were sold without what's known as a logic controller---the circuit board that tells the HDD how to perform its tasks. When HDD manufacturers began integrating these controllers into their HDD designs (rather than relying on an external logic controller), HDDs were named IDE to show that they had on-board logic controllers.
IDE is a Misnomer
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IDE refers to the inclusion of an on-board logic controller, not the device standard. Since all HDDs include logic controllers now (and have for nearly 20 years), IDE doesn't mean much anymore.
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ATA
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HDDs should be referred to by their device standards, which is ATA. These are usually shown as ATA followed by -1, -2, etc. For example, ATA-2.
IDE vs. EIDE
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In the early to mid-'90s, Western Digital, a HDD manufacturer, created its own standard for HDDs based on the ATA standard and named it EIDE. It wasn't until 1996 that all the various names for ATA-2 HDDs---EIDE, Fast ATA, and Ultra ATA depending on the manufacturer---were standardized under the name ATA-2.
EIDE
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EIDE happened to stick and become the most popular name for the ATA-2 standard.
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