ATA cables: 40 wire ribbon cable top, 80 wire ribbon cable bottom

Discover great deals on computer parts and accessories at bargain prices. A better way to shop online!

Atapi (41909)

AT Attachment (ATA) is a standard interface for connecting storage devices such as hard disks and CD-ROM drives inside personal computers, maintained by X3/INCITS committee T13. more...

Home

Apple, Macintosh Computers

Desktop PC Components

Desktop PCs

Drives, Controllers &...

Blank Media (80133)

Card Reader/Writers (116238)

CD Drives (56081)

CD Duplicators (31509)

Controllers-Adapter, I/O...

DVD ROM Drives (80176)

DVD-RW/+RW Drives,...

Flash Memory Drives (51071)

Floppy Drives (44957)

Hard Drives - Internal...

Other Drives &...

Tape Drives (39976)

Wholesale Lots (42305)

Laptop Parts & Accessories

Laptops, Notebooks

Monitors & Projectors

Networking

Other

Printer Supplies &...

Printers

Scanners

Software

Vintage Computing Products

Many terms and synonyms for ATA exist, including abbreviations such as IDE, ATAPI, and UDMA.

With the market introduction of Serial ATA in 2003, the original ATA was retroactively renamed Parallel ATA (PATA). In line with the original naming, this article only covers Parallel ATA.

Parallel ATA standards only allow cable lengths up to 18 inches (46 centimetres) although cables up to 36 inches (91 cm) can be readily purchased. Because of this length limit, the technology normally appears as an internal computer storage interface. It provides the most common and the least expensive interface for this application.

History

The name of the standard was originally conceived as PC/AT Attachment as its primary feature was a direct connection to the 16-bit ISA bus then known as 'AT bus'; the name was shortened to inconclusive "AT Attachment" to avoid possible trademark issues.

An early version of the specification, conceived by Western Digital in late 1980s, was commonly known as Integrated Drive Electronics (IDE) due to the drive controller being contained on the drive itself as opposed to a separate controller connected to the motherboard, thus making the interface on the motherboard a host adapter — in contrast to popular belief, not an actual controller. Enhanced IDE (EIDE), an extension to original ATA standard again developed by Western Digital, allowed the support of drives having a storage capacity larger than 528 megabytes (504 mebibytes), up to 8.4 gigabytes. Although these new names originated in branding convention and not as an official standard, the terms IDE and EIDE often appear as if interchangeable with ATA. This may be attributed to the two technologies being introduced with the same consumable devices, these "new" ATA hard drives. With the introduction of Serial ATA around 2003, conventional ATA was retroactively renamed to Parallel ATA (P-ATA), referring to the method in which data travels over wires in this interface.

The interface at first only worked with hard disks, but eventually an extended standard came to work with a variety of other devices—generally those using removable media. Principally, these devices include CD-ROM and DVD-ROM drives, tape drives, and large-capacity floppy drives such as the Zip drive and SuperDisk drive. The extension bears the name AT Attachment Packet Interface (ATAPI), which started as non-ANSI SFF-8020 standard developed by Western Digital and Oak Technologies, but then included in the full standard now known as ATA/ATAPI starting with version 4. Removable media devices other than CD and DVD drives are classified as ARMD (ATAPI Removable Media Device) and can appear as either a floppy or a hard drive to the operating system.