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What Does an ATA Hard Drive Mean?

What Does an ATA Hard Drive Mean? thumbnail
An ATA cable is wide and flat.

Different types of hard disk drives use various types of interfaces to connect to a computer motherboard. ATA, or Advanced Technology Attachment is one of those interfaces, but it is being used less with the introduction of faster and more functional hard drive interfaces.

  1. Description

    • The ATA hard drive interface allows ATA hard drives and motherboards to communicate using a specialized cable that is only compatible with ATA drives. ATA is also known as IDE (Integrated Drive Electronics).

    Uses

    • ATA hard drives have long ribbon connector cables that allow two hard drives to be installed on the same connector. ATA hard drives were introduced in 1986 and have been the standard hard drive interface for most users until the advent of SATA (Serial Advanced Technology Attachment).

    Considerations

    • SATA has largely displaced ATA. It is a faster interface that uses smaller, more flexible cabling. SATA also eliminates the need to set multiple drives as slave or master drives, which is needed with multiple ATA drives.

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References

  • Photo Credit Ide computer cable image by Fatbob from Fotolia.com

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