PATA/SATA and IDE

Does anyone else get annoyed when technical people call PATA drives IDE drives and call the HBA or channels on MoBos "controllers?"

I find it annoying and go into lecture mode immediately.

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veritas_libertas

I honestly could care less about that. Now on the other hand, it does drive me crazy when people point at a computer case and call it the CPU.

kalebksp

RobertKaucher wrote: »

Does anyone else get annoyed when technical people call PATA drives IDE drives and call the HBA or channels on MoBos "controllers?"

Call me stupid but I didn't know there was a difference.

RobertKaucher

veritas_libertas wrote: »

I honestly could care less about that. Now on the other hand, it does drive me crazy when people point at a computer case and call it the CPU.

Same sort of silly thing, I guess. But I am talking about hardware techs here. If one of them called the case a CPU I woul b-slap them to where my finger prints could be taken from the palm shaped birth mark it would leave on their children.

veritas_libertas

RobertKaucher wrote: »

Same sort of silly thing, I guess. But I am talking about hardware techs here.

So was I, unfortunately.

earweed

kalebksp wrote: »

Call me stupid but I didn't know there was a difference.

So RK would you care to go into lecture mode for two of us who can't really differentiate IDE and PATA. I thought (call me stupid too) they were basically the same thing.

RobertKaucher

earweed wrote: »

So RK would you care to go into lecture mode for two of us who can't really differentiate IDE and PATA. I thought (call me stupid too) they were basically the same thing.

Sure thing. Technically speaking ATA is a specific implementation of IDE and there are currently 2 flavors in common use (SATA and PATA). IDE (Integrated Device Electronics) means the controller card is integrated onto the device and not installed as a seperate expansion card. Both SATA and PATA are in fact IDE devices. SATA and PATA refer to the host bus adapters used or the "controller interface."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Host_adapter
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_ATA

earweed

Thanks for clearing that up. And btw I'd never have to be b'slapped for calling a box a cpu

kalebksp

RobertKaucher wrote: »

Sure thing. Technically speaking ATA is a specific implementation of IDE and there are currently 2 flavors in common use (SATA and PATA). IDE (Integrated Device Electronics) means the controller card is integrated onto the device and not installed as a seperate expansion card. Both SATA and PATA are in fact IDE devices. SATA and PATA refer to the host bus adapters used or the "controller interface."

I'm pretty sure that's not correct. IDE specifies more than just having the controller integrated into the device (Parallel ATA - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia). SATA is not considered IDE, though it does have an IDE emulation mode.

On the whole I think it's a silly thing to argue about. IDE/PATA are synonyms in common terms of common usage.

Pash

RobertKaucher wrote: »

Does anyone else get annoyed when technical people call PATA drives IDE drives and call the HBA or channels on MoBos "controllers?"

I find it annoying and go into lecture mode immediately.

I actually go ballistic, red Pash action. It's got so serious in the past I have actually gone to fistycuffs.

But seriously no

RobertKaucher

kalebksp wrote: »

I'm pretty sure that's not correct. IDE specifies more than just having the controller integrated into the device (Parallel ATA - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia). SATA is not considered IDE, though it does have an IDE emulation mode.

On the whole I think it's a silly thing to argue about. IDE/PATA are synonyms in common terms of common usage.

I totally agree that it is stupid. I called it silly in a previous post.

My information is primarily taken from Mueller's Upgrading and Repairing books. If you check page 407 of Upgrading and Repairing Servers he discusses IDE variations and lists the following:

* SATA
* PATA (based on the 16-bit AT-bus, also called ISA)
* XT IDE (based on the 8-bit ISA, obsolete)
* MCA IDE (based on the 16-bit Micro Channel, obsolete)

Of these only the PATA and SATA versions are used today. PATA and SATA have evolved with newer, faster, and more powerful versions.

This PC Mag article has similar explanations:
SATA Definition from PC Magazine Encyclopedia

kalebksp

Hmm, you could be right. I'm still calling them IDE though.

RobertKaucher

earweed wrote: »

Thanks for clearinf that up. And btw I'd never have to be b'slapped for calling a box a cpu

LOL. Veritas' techs may as well call it a modem.

Any way, this is really just some silly personality quark I should over come. And as kalebksp has demonstrated my information is not even that accurate to begin with.

What can I do but learn to shut it?

TheShadow

true sata uses a subset of scsi therefore you can not call it quite the same as pata. The pata to sata converters contain quite a bit of logic in their gate array.

ide was originally a marketing term to distinguish between circa 1985 IBM-AT drives that had the controller on a physical card and newer drives created by Conner, Seagate, Compaq that collaborated to move the controller onto the drive. The reason was that every drive needed a slightly different controller card and Compaq at the time was not large enough to support that in their process. Dell and Gateway and the Asia clones came aboard. The controller was then named a paddle card and eventually incorporated into the motherboard. If you are talking scsi, firewire or just about anything that doesn't look like an IBM Advanced Technology Attachment (ATA) then a person is not wrong saying controller.

History is a terrible thing to waste

veritas_libertas

RobertKaucher wrote: »

LOL. Veritas' techs may as well call it a modem.

Oh, I could tell you stories...

tiersten

TheShadow wrote: »

true sata uses a subset of scsi therefore you can not call it quite the same as pata.

Thats SAS not SATA.

msteinhilber

I'm not sure, something like that might have annoyed me a little bit 6 months ago but wouldn't upset me one bit at present. In fact, it takes an awful lot to annoy me as of lately. I've dealt with so much bull over the past 6 months, so many negative things with far more reaching consequences than overhearing another person use incorrect terminology that I've really taken on a whole new view on life.

The past six months have certainly helped me get a new perspective on life and have enabled me to not sweat the small stuff that happens to us all and to start enjoying the little things that make life worthwhile. I wish I had found this way of thinking/life inside me a long time ago.

TheShadow

tiersten wrote: »

Thats SAS not SATA.

Nope SAS is Serial Attached SCSI which is true suzzy SATA borrowed the features of SCSI that made PATA (IDE) not as efficient as SCSI which is why in some BIOS you have to turn the feature off and run them in PATA. The reason is ATA attempted to implement tagged command queuing found in SCSI when the spec was updated to support tape and CD drives on PATA buses.

It is not fully compatible with suzzy because the CPU must still be interrupted for each command. Reason no first party DMA (bus mastering) because the controller is on the drive where SCSI has a controller on the drive and in the system.

SATA solved this, real controller, native command queuing sometimes called elevator seeking by us old foggies, and true first party DMA (bus mastering). Because there was a rush on version 150 not everything worked correctly; fixed on version 300 incorrectly called SATA-2 which technically does not exist yet. I will use that term in the next paragraph.

SAS (I have six drives in my three home servers) is backwards compatible with SATA-2. SATA is half duplex and SAS is full duplex. SATA-2 can co-exist with SAS drives using STP (Serial ATA Tunneling Protocol) The working groups for both specs actually talked to each other to allow this to happen.

I will try to attach the diagram that scsita.org the SCSI Trade Association passes out.

Sas.jpg