IDE SATA PATA

[Deleted member 88227]

Correct me if I am wrong, but aren't all PATA and SATA devices considered ATA devices, which essentially is an IDE device?

 

[havermeyer]

Pretty much, yeah. WD's IDE became the original ATA spec. SATA forced the retronym PATA on older ATA technology.

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_ATA#IDE_and_ATA-1

 

[ghost6303]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_Drive_Electronics#IDE_and_ATA-1

IDE aka ATA v1 = the original ATA specification or protocol. big slot looking connector on the ends of a ribbon cable.
PATA = parallel ATA - the next major step up from IDE. standard 40-conductor ribbon cable.
SATA = serial ATA - next major step up from PATA. 7-conductor thin cable.

edit-
damn you beat me!

 

[larrymoencurly]

Did some ignorant tech support person give you trouble because you used the correct terminology?

 

[Deleted member 88227]

Did some ignorant tech support person give you trouble because you used the correct terminology?

Yes.

 

[Loto_Bak]

SATA has a AHCI command set or ATA emulation
AHCI supports queues (Native Command Queue) and hot plugging among other features where as ATA does not.

AHCI needs to be enabled on your controller (motherboard or add-in card) and proper drivers loaded on the OS

 

[bigdogchris]

I have a question that I just thought of.

Is the SeralATA I/II/III speed limitations per link, or per controller? I've always thought it was per link but something I read the other day got me thinking about it.

For example (purely theoretical #'s here), 2 SerialATA II drives each transmit at 300MB/s in Raid 0 (SerialATA II max). Does that give you 600MB/s of throughput, even through a SerialATA II controller, or is it still limited to 300MB/s?

 

[Loto_Bak]

No, controller bandwidth is limited by the bus it is on.

PCI=266mb/s
parallel bus so bandwidth is shared among ALL pci devices
(inc many onboard NICs and soundcards, but thats changing)

PCI-E 1x=250/500mb/s v1/v2
serial communication so bandwidth is dedicated.

 

[drescherjm]

PCI=266mb/s

Normal 32 bit 33 MHz PCI is 1/2 of that. pci-x which is 64 bit has several speeds with 266 MB/s being one of them. Also PCI is one direction at a time and 1 device at a time.

 

[Loto_Bak]

ah right, I had old 66mhz FSB in my head for some reason

 

[drescherjm]

66 MHz was an option for 32 bit PCI slots just not commonly used.

 

[westrock2000]

SATA has a AHCI command set or ATA emulation
AHCI supports queues (Native Command Queue) and hot plugging among other features where as ATA does not.

Ya, this is the more important one. IDE only allowed 1 thing at a time to access the bus. SATA is more like SCSI in that multiple devices can access the bus at once. The old days of installing from a CD-ROM and it being "read CD, write HDD, read CD, write HDD" are all but lessons from history class.