PC Hardware in a Nutshell, 3rd Edition

IDE

Integrated Drive Electronics (IDE), formally called the AT Attachment (ATA) interface, is the means used by most computers to interface hard disks and other drives to the computer. Early hard disk interfaces used a separate hard disk and controller card, which limited throughput. In 1986, Compaq and Western Digital combined the hard disk and controller card into one unit, thereby inventing IDE. Early IDE drives used an expansion card called a paddle card, but this card was not really a disk controller. It simply provided an interface between the bus and the embedded disk controller on the hard drive itself. All modern systems have IDE interfaces embedded on the motherboard.

You may or may not need to understand much about IDE to install and configure a hard drive, depending on how old your hardware is. The most recent drives, motherboards, and BIOSs handle the hard parts for you, automatically detecting and configuring the drive, interface, and BIOS for optimum performance. So, if all you’re doing is installing a new IDE hard drive in a recent PC, you can safely skip this entire section.

If, however, you’re upgrading an older system with a new drive, installing an older drive in a new system, or installing an additional drive in a system more than a couple of years old, keep reading. If any of the components is more than a few years old, you need to understand quite a bit about IDE, not just to configure the PC for optimum performance, but also to ensure that your data ...