EIDE

I was searching for a hard drive to buy for my computer, and I
happened to stumble over some rather confusing catagories on
Pricewatch.com.
The hard drives that come regularly with the computer are IDE hard
drives right?
So on pricewatch they list something called EIDE hard drives...
Is there a difference?
Is it the same thing?
And also, I'm not very skilled when it comes to hard drive types, what
are ATA hard drives?
I'm very confused.
-David

David wrote:
>
> I was searching for a hard drive to buy for my computer, and I
> happened to stumble over some rather confusing catagories on
> Pricewatch.com.
> The hard drives that come regularly with the computer are IDE hard
> drives right?

Right.

> So on pricewatch they list something called EIDE hard drives...
> Is there a difference?
> Is it the same thing?

Sometime in the distant past (in computer terms) IDE drives became EIDE drives. I don't recall, but it may have been when DMA first appeared. These days EIDE is not used and drives are again referred to simply as IDE.

> And also, I'm not very skilled when it comes to hard drive types, what
> are ATA hard drives?
> I'm very confused.
> -David

IDE is Integrated Drive Electronics and refers to the fact that the disk controller is integrated on the back of the hard drive, which was not true before the days of PCs. ATA (can't recall what this acronym stands for) is the protocol that most IDE drives use.
Most drives are ATA IDE drives. The biggest exception is SCSI, which is a different protocol than ATA. SCSI drives also have the controller integrated on the drive but are not referred to as IDE.

--

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Mike Walsh
West Palm Beach, Florida, U.S.A.

Thanks,
David