PATA Hard Drive? What Is It?

[Necrosaro420]

I have never heard of a PATA hard drive? Will this work with normal ide connections?? Thanks!

 

[MichaelD]

Parallel Advanced Technology Attachment = works on an IDE channel. In the "olden days" i.e. about two years ago to you, probably when you said "hard drive" it meant the drive was either IDE (PATA) or SCSI. Then SATA came along and confused everyone.

SATA is worlds better than IDE, but IDE is ubiquitous and universal these days, whereas SATA isn't at that point yet, but it's getting there.

One note: Unlike SATA drives which can only be connected one drive per SATA channel, PATA (IDE) drives can be connected TWO per IDE channel. The drives have jumpers on them. The drive must be jumpered as Master (connect it to the cable position farthest away from the mobo) or Slave (connect it to the middle connector on the cable. If you jumper the drive wrong, the best that will happen is the PC will boot, but won't see the drive. The worst that can happen is your PC won't boot at all. It won't break anything though.

Just like on CD rom drives, IDE hard drives typically have a little diagram printed on the label showing you how to position the jumper for either Master or Slave configuration.

Hope this helps.

 

[Necrosaro420]

So the normal IDE Cables/Connectors will work with this drive correct?

 

[Aluvus]

It's a "backronym". When SATA came and replaced ATA, people started refering to ATA as PATA to help distinguish.

PATA/ATA is also often called IDE.

So short answer: yes.

 

[corkyg]

Technically, all current HDDs are made with Integrated Drive Electronics (IDE.) The older ones were Advanced Technology Attachment (ATA) via a parallel connection. Then along came Serial ATA or SATA. That technically required that the old "IDE" term be upgraded to Parallel Advanced Technology Attachment or PATA. So now we have SATA and PATA. BOTH are IDE. And, don't forget Small Computer System Interface (SCSI) - they are still in the mix.

 

[Zepper]

As written above, PATA just sprung into common usage to more easily distinguish between SATA and the old style (40-pin) IDE drives as both types are technically IDE and ATA.

.bh.

 

[corkyg]

Right, Zepper . . . and the problem stems from technical writers not following the basic rule in the use of acronyms. The first time it is used in an article, it should be spelled out as to what it means. This is a common error and leads to scads of folks using terms they don't know the meaning of, especially in this business.