ATA Interface Details _ Hardware maintenance

Commonly referred to as the IDE interface, also known as the ATA interface. The English spelling of ATA is "Advanced Technology attachment", meaning "advanced technical add-on". The ATA interface was first developed in 1986 by Compaq, Western data and other companies, and began to be applied to desktop systems in the early 90. It uses a 40-conductor cable to connect to the motherboard, initially designed to support only two hard drives, and the maximum capacity is limited to 504 MB.

ATA interface from birth to date, a total of 7 different versions, namely: ATA-1 (IDE), ATA-2 (eideenhanced ide/fast ATA), ATA-3 (FastATA-2), ATA-4 (ATA33), ATA-5 (ATA66), ATA-6 (ATA100), ATA-7 (ATA 133).

ATA-1
ATA-1 has a socket on the motherboard that supports one main device and one from the device, the maximum capacity of each device is 504MB, and the supported PIO-0 mode transfer rate is only 3.3mb/s. The ATA-1 support PIO mode includes PIO-0 and PIO-1, PIO-2 mode, and four DMA modes are supported (not actually applied). The ATA-1 interface has a hard disk size of 5 inches instead of the current 3.5-inch mainstream.

ATA-2
ATA-2 is an extension of the ATA-1, which is also customarily known as the Eide (enhanced IDE) or fast ATA. It adds 2 PIO and 2 DMA modes (PIO-3) on the basis of ATA, not only to increase the maximum transmission rate of the hard disk to 16.6mb/s, but also to introduce the LBA address conversion mode, break the inherent 504MB limit, can support the hard drive up to 8.1GB. In the BIOS settings of a computer that supports ATA-2, you can generally see the settings for LBA (Logical block address) and CHS (Cylinder,head,sector), while the motherboard on the Eide interface typically has two Eide sockets. They can also be connected to one main device and one from the device, so that one motherboard can support four Eide devices, and these two Edie interfaces are commonly referred to as IDE1 and IDE2.

ATA-3
ATA-3 does not introduce a higher speed transmission mode, there is no increase in transmission speed, the highest speed is still 16.6mb/s. Only the power management scheme has been modified to introduce a simple password-protected security scheme. But the introduction of a landmark technology, that is s.m.a.r.t (self-monitoring analysis and Reporting Technology, self-monitoring, analytical and reporting technology). This will be in time to include the head, disc, motor, circuit and other hard disk components for monitoring, through the detection circuit and the monitoring software on the host to detect the object, its health and history record with the preset security value analysis, comparison, when the scope of the security value is exceeded, will automatically warn users, Then the potential failure of the hard disk is forecasted effectively, and the security of the data storage is improved.

ATA-4
The Ultra DMA data transfer mode is formally supported from the ATA-4 interface standard, so it is also customary to call ATA-4 the Ultra DMA 33 or ATA33. The first time in the ATA interface with a double data Rate (double data transmission) technology, so that the interface in a clock cycle transmission of data two times, clock rise and fall period each have a data transmission, so that the rate of data transfer from 16MB/S to 33mb/s. Ultra DMA 33 also introduced a new technology-redundant checksum (CRC), the design policy of the system and the hard drive in the process of transmission, with the data to send the cycle of the Redundancy check code, the other side in charge of the school difficult code to test, Only when the data is received and processed in a complete check, it is very effective for the security of high-speed data transmission.

ATA-5
ATA-5 is "Ultra DMA 66", also known as ATA66, is based on the Ultra DMA 33 hard Disk interface, the same use of UDMA technology. Ultra DMA 66 allows the host to receive/send data rates up to 66.6 MB/s, which is twice times u-dma/33. The core Technical Redundancy Checker (CRC) of the Ultra DMA 33 was retained. At the same time, the electromagnetic interference problem in the ATA interface, in order to ensure the accuracy of data transmission, to prevent electromagnetic interference, the Ultra DMA 66 interface to start using 40-pin 80-conductor cable, 40 pins to compatible with the previous ATA slots, reduce the cost of increase. 80 core is the new ground, and the original data line one by one corresponding, this design can reduce the adjacent signal line between the electromagnetic interference.

ATA-6
The ATA100 interface and data cable, like ATA66, use a 40-pin 80-core data transmission cable, and the ATA100 interface is fully backward-compatible, and devices that support ATA33, ATA66 interfaces can continue to be used in the ATA100 interface. The ATA100 specification can easily handle the difficult challenges of the current ATA33 and ATA66 interfaces. ATA100 can make the external transmission rate of the hard disk reach 100mb/s, it improves the integrality and data transmission rate of hard disk data, and improves the performance of disk subsystem of desktop system, and CRC technology is more effective to improve the integrality and reliability of data in high-speed transmission.

ATA-7
ATA-7 is the last version of the ATA interface, also known as ATA133. Only the company launched a series of ATA133 standard hard drives, which is the first IDE hard disk that exceeds 100mb/s at interface speed. The company is currently the only one by one manufacturers to launch such interface standard hard drives, while other IDE hard disk vendors have stopped developing IDE interfaces to produce Serial ATA interface standard hard drives. The ATA133 interface supports the data transfer speed of the MB/s, and when the ATA interface develops to the ATA100, the cable properties, connectors and signal protocols of this parallel interface show great technical bottleneck, and it is quite difficult to break through these bottlenecks technically. The new standard of hard disk interface is inevitable.