ATA interface details

The IDE interface is also called the ATA interface. ATA is spelled "Advanced Technology Attachment", meaning "Advanced Technology additional device ". ATA interfaces were first developed by several companies such as Compaq and Western data in 1986 and started to be used in desktop systems in early 1990s. It uses a 40-core cable to connect to the motherboard. Initially, it was designed to support only two hard disks and its maximum capacity is limited to 504 MB.

ATA interface since its birth, a total of 7 different versions, respectively: 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
The ATA-1 has a plug-in on the motherboard that supports a master device and a slave device, each with a maximum capacity of 504 MB and a supported PIO-0 mode with a transfer rate of only 3.3 Mb/s. ATA-1 supports Pio modes including PIO-0 and PIO-1, PIO-2 mode, and also supports four DMA modes (not practical ). ATA-1 interface hard disk size is 5 inch, rather than the current mainstream 3.5 inch.

ATA-2
ATA-2 is an extension of ATA-1, also known as Eide (enhanced IDE) or fast ATA. Based on ATA, it adds two PIO and two DMA modes (PIO-3), which not only increases the maximum transmission rate of the hard disk to 16.6 Mb/s, but also introduces the LBA address conversion method, it breaks through the inherent MB limit and supports up to GB hard disks. In BIOS settings for computers that support ATA-2, You can see LBA (logical block address), and CHS (cylinder, Head, Sector) settings, at the same time, the main board of the Eide interface generally has two Eide plug-ins, they can also be connected to a master device and a slave device respectively, so that a single motherboard can support four Eide devices, these two Edie interfaces are generally called ide1 and ide2.

ATA-3
The ATA-3 has not introduced a higher speed transmission mode, there is no improvement in the transmission speed, the maximum speed is still 16.6 Mb/s. We only modified the power management solution and introduced a simple password security solution. However, a epoch-making technology was introduced, namely, S. m.a. R. T (self-monitoring analysis and reporting technology, self-monitoring, analysis and reporting technology ). This will promptly monitor hard drive parts including head, disk, motor, circuit and so on, and detect the Monitored Objects through the detection circuit and the monitoring software on the host, analyzes and compares the running status and history records with the preset Security values. When the security value range is exceeded, a warning is automatically issued to the user to effectively predict the potential failure of the hard disk, improves the security of data storage.

ATA-4
Since the ATA-4 interface standard began to formally support ultra DMA data transmission mode, it is also used to call the ATA-4 as ultra DMA 33 or ata33. The double data rate (double data transmission) technology is adopted in the ATA interface for the first time, so that the interface can transmit data twice in a clock cycle, and there is one data transmission at each time during the clock Rise and Fall phases, in this way, the data transmission rate is increased from 16 MB/s to 33 Mb/s. Ultra DMA 33 also introduces a new technology-CRC, which is designed to send Cyclic Redundancy verification codes when the system and hard disk are transmitted, when receiving the data, the other party also checks the difficult code of the school. Only when the correct information is fully checked can the data be received and processed, this guarantees the security of high-speed data transmission.

ATA-5
ATA-5, also known as ata66, is based on the ultra DMA 33 hard disk interface and also uses udma technology. Ultra DMA 66 enables the host to receive/send data at a rate of 66.6 Mb/s, twice that of U-DMA/33. Retains the core technology redundancy verification (CRC) of the previous generation of Ultra DMA 33 ). At the same time of the working frequency commission, the electromagnetic interference problem began in the ATA interface. To ensure the accuracy of data transmission and prevent electromagnetic interference, the ultra DMA 66 interface began to use 40-pin 80-core cable, the 40-pin feature is designed to be compatible with previous ata slots and reduce costs. The Newly Added 80 cores are ground wires, which correspond to the original data lines one by one. This design can reduce the electromagnetic interference between adjacent signal lines.

ATA-6
The ata100 interface and data cable are the same as those of ata66. It also uses a 40-pin 80-core data transmission cable, and the ata100 interface is completely backward compatible, devices that support the ata33 and ata66 interfaces can still be used in the ata100 interface. The ata100 specification can easily cope with the difficulties currently faced by the ata33 and ata66 interfaces. The ata100 enables the external transmission rate of the hard disk to reach 100 Mb/s. It improves the data integrity and data transmission rate of the hard disk and greatly improves the performance of the disk subsystem of the desktop system, the CRC technology is more effective in improving data integrity and reliability during high-speed transmission.

ATA-7
The ATA-7 is the last version of the ATA interface, also known as ata133. Only the company launched a series of hard disks that use the atavel standard, which is the first IDE hard disk with an interface speed of more than 100 Mb/s. Maxcompute is currently the only manufacturer that launches this interface standard hard drive, while other IDE hard drive manufacturers have stopped developing the IDE interface and switched to producing the Serial ATA interface standard hard drive. The ata100 interface supports 133 Mbit/s data transmission speed. When the ATA interface reaches the ata100, the cable properties, connectors, and signal protocols of this parallel interface all show great technical bottlenecks, however, it is quite difficult to break through these bottlenecks technically. The generation of new hard disk interface standards is inevitable.