Ultra ATA/66 and Ultra DMA/66??

[jl123]

What's the difference? I think ATA is another name for IDE drives but i'm not sure. If it's not Ultra DMA then does that mean it's just regular IDE? What are all the different types of interface and types of hard drives??? I'm a little confused and need help. http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/smile.gif

~Joel(jl123)

[socalgal]

Hi Joel

ATA (Advanced Technology Attachment):
This is the "official" name that ANSI group X3T10 uses for what the computer industry calls IDE (Integrated Drive Electronics).

DMA (Direct Memory Access):
DMA - Direct Memory Access is a capability provided by some computer bus architectures that allows data to be sent directly from an attached device (such as a disk drive) to the memory on the computer's motherboard. The microprocessor is freed from involvement with the data transfer, thus speeding up overall computer operation.

Usually a specified portion of memory is designated as an area to be used for direct memory access. In the ISA bus standard, up to 16 megabytes of memory can be addressed for DMA. The EISA and MCA standards allow access to the full range of memory addresses (assuming they're addressable with 32 bits). PCI accomplishes DMA by using bus mastering (with the microprocessor "delegating" I/O control to the PCI controller).

An alternative to DMA is the Programmed Input/Output (PIO) interface in which all data transmitted between devices goes through the processor. A newer protocol for the ATA/IDE interface is Ultra DMA/33, which provides a burst data transfer rate up to 33 MB (megabytes) per second. Hard drives that come with Ultra DMA/33 also support PIO modes 1, 3, and 4, and multiword DMA mode 2 (at 16.6 megabytes per second).

So, basically, the terms are used interchangeably - same idea, just different terminology http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/smile.gif

From: http://www.whatis.com/nfindex.htm

Another good site to learn about these things is http://www.pcguide.com/

Of course, there's lots of good stuff here too, if you haven't seen it before http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/wink.gif http://sysopt.earthweb.com/guides.html