Definition of an EIDE Hard Drive

IDE/EIDE drives are connected to the motherboard through a ribbon connector.

Created by Western Digital in the mid 1980's, the original IDE drive was designed to combine a device controller with a hard drive. In 1994 this design was improved upon, giving this new version the ability to read and write data at faster speeds. This new design was dubbed the EIDE (Enhanced IDE).

Speed

Faster than is predecessor the IDE, with a throughput rate of only 8.3 Mb/s, the faster EIDE drive supports a throughput rate of 16.6 Mb/s. The faster throughput rates allow the drive to more work in a given amount of time.

Design

The EIDE hard drive is designed with a system BIOS (basic input/output system) newer than that supported by IDE drives, allowing hard disks larger than 504MB to be compatible. This newer version also supports non-hard disk devices such as CD-ROMs.

Name

While the name EIDE is owned and created by Western Digitalin 1994, the design is known by many other names, such as Fast IDE, Fast ATA and ATA-2. These other names follow suit with their predecessors. The original version of the IDE was used by other companies under the names ATA and ATA-1.

References

• Computer Hope: EIDE
• DUX Computer Digest: What is an IDE Hard Disk Drive?
• Kioskea: ATA, IDE and EIDE
• PC Mag: Definition of: EIDE
• PC Guide: Enhanced IDE (EIDE)

Resources

• TechExames: ATA/IDE/EIDE/SATA