Weekly edition	Kernel	Security	Distributions	Contact Us	Search
Archives	Calendar	Subscribe	Write for LWN	LWN.net FAQ	Sponsors

ATA vs ATAPI vs IDE

Posted Aug 14, 2003 17:23 UTC (Thu) by pflugstad (subscriber, #224)
Parent article: A different ATA driver

Can someone post a link to a doc somewhere that explains the differences between all these interfaces. I know I've seen comments and such that indicate that ATA != ATAPI, and that IDE != ATA, but I've never seen any thing that explains the various differences. Google doesn't appear to provide much, all I find is comparisons between SCSI and ATA. Thanks.

(Log in to post comments)

ATA vs ATAPI vs IDE

Posted Aug 14, 2003 18:42 UTC (Thu) by remijnj (subscriber, #5838) [Link]

As far as i understand it, IDE == ATA and ATAPI is scsi commands (command packets) over ATA. For a larger IDE/ATA explanation see:

http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/if/ide/

Joost

ATA vs ATAPI vs IDE

Posted Aug 15, 2003 0:58 UTC (Fri) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954) [Link]

That link gives a great explanation. For those not interested enough to read it all, I'd like to emphasize the most important part:

IDE is a very widely used misnomer for ATA. IDE is a technology in which a disk controller is packaged with the disks and heads. All modern disk drives, including SCSI, are IDE. ATA is a disk drive interface standard. But before the advent of SCSI, all IDE drives were ATA, so people accidentally picked up on the wrong name.

Indeed, the Linux module ide.o should have been named ata.o.