PATA Full Form

What Is The Full Form Of PATA?

The full form of PATA is Parallel Advanced Technology Attachment. 

PATA is an interface standard used to connect secondary storage devices like floppy drives, hard disks, optic disc drives to older computers. It is one of the cable components used in a motherboard, and its primary function is to transfer data. The interface connector of PATA consists of 34 pins. It connects to a flat, nearly two inches broad, ribbon-like cable and doesn’t support hot-swapping. 

PATA is also known as EIDE (enhanced integrated drive electronics) or IDE (integrated drive electronics) drives. 

History Of Parallel Advanced Technology Attachment (PATA) 

• Western Digital and Compaq introduced PATA in 1986 by naming it Advanced Technology Attachment (ATA in short). 
• They named it as the cable ATA because its primary function involved transferring data. 
• When SATA was introduced later on in 2003, the bus interface was finally named PATA. 
• SATA (Serial Advanced Technology Attachment) started losing its place in the market because of the slow data transfer and higher price. 
• SATA finally took over PATA in 2003 with a better transfer speed, lower cost, lower power consumption, and more. 

Characteristics Of PATA 

• Both SATA and PATA are Integrated Drive Electronics (IDE) devices. 
• ATA uses 80 or 40 wire designs and 40 pins connectors on both sides of the cable. 
• PATA uses a single bus and multiple wires. 
• It connects to two devices at once, one is known as a slave and the other one a master. 
• It has no feature of hot-swapping. 
• A PTA cable is approx 0.5 meters. 
• One needs to switch off the entire system in PATA whenever any issue occurs. 
• PATA transfers 16 bits (2 bytes) of data. 
• The older versions of OS (Operating Systems) support PATA. 

Types Of PATA Cables 

PATA cables look considerably similar but have different functionalities. They’re known as IDE (Integrated Device Electronics). 

• PATA 40 conductor cable – This cable is used to connect devices with a transfer speed of 33 Mbps (Megabytes per second). A user could connect a max of two devices to the motherboard cable. The PATA 80 conductor cable later replaced it. 
• PATA 80 conductor cable – This cable can connect IDE devices with a transfer speed of 133 Mbps (Megabytes per second). This cable was wider than the PATA 40 conductor cable. 

Benefits Of PATA 

• The older OS versions worked comparatively slower than current OS systems, and thus, PATA is a better choice for them. 
• The speed of transferring data was good for old devices. 
• PATA was the first cable connector- so the demand was high. 
• One of the advantages of PATA is that it has two devices attached to its cables at one time. It’s a common misconception that they run very slow. But modern ATA adapters help devices transfer data at optimal speeds. 

Limitations Of PATA 

• The cost of making PATA is high. It was, thus, unaffordable for all. 
• The power consumption of cable is high. 
• There is no hot-swapping. 
• PATA has a low speed of data transfer. 
• One cannot use external hard drives. 
• SATA replaced it in 2003. 

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