ANSI Standards for Interfacing With Hard Drives
The American National Standards Institute (ANSI) defines specifications for US products, services, processes and systems. Four ANSI standards exist for connecting hard drives: IDE, ATA, ATA-2 and ULTRA ATA. Since the mid to late 1990s, ATA-2 and Ultra ATA have been available to connect hard drives to the motherboard.
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IDE
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An IDE connector looks like a gray ribbon. IDE stands for Integrated Drive Electronics. The connector for an IDE hard drive looks like a wide, gray ribbon.
ATA
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ATA connectors look like a flat, plastic ribbon. ATA stands for Advanced Technology Attachment. An ATA connector looks like a ribbon.
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ATA-2
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A SATA cable lookes nearly identical to an ATA cable. ATA-2 stands for Advanced Technology Attachment 2. It is also known as SATA (Serial ATA) and EIDE (Enhanced Integrated Drive Electronics). The connector looks like a regular ATA connector.
Ultra ATA
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Ultra ATA is the latest version of the ATA interface. Ultra ATA can send information to a computer hard drive at speeds of up to 133 megabytes per second (Mbps) which significantly enhances computer performance.
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References
- Photo Credit hard drive 2 image by Graham Lumsden from Fotolia.com ide cable image by .shock from Fotolia.com Ide computer cable image by Fatbob from Fotolia.com SATA connector. A close up. Isolated on a white background. image by Andrey Khritin from Fotolia.com