ATA – Advanced Technology Attachment

(1) Short for Advanced Technology Attachment, a disk drive implementation that integrates the controller on the disk drive itself. There are several versions of ATA, all developed by the Small Form Factor (SFF) Committee:

  • ATA: Known also as IDE, supports one or two hard drives, a 16-bit interface and PIO modes 0, 1 and 2.
  • ATA-2: Supports faster PIO modes (3 and 4) and multiword DMA modes (1 and 2). Also supports logical block addressing (LBA) and block transfers. ATA-2 is marketed as Fast ATA and Enhanced IDE (EIDE).
  • ATA-3:Minor revision to ATA-2.
  • Ultra-ATA: Also called Ultra-DMA, ATA-33, and DMA-33,supports multiword DMA mode 3 running at 33 MBps.
  • ATA/66:A version of ATA proposed by Quantum Corporation, and supported by Intel, that doubles ATA’s throughput to 66 MBps.
  • ATA/100: An updated version of ATA/66 that increases data transfer rates to 100 MBps.
  • ATA also is called Parallel ATA. Contrast with Serial ATA.

    (2) Short for Analog Telephone Adapter

    Vangie Beal
    Vangie Beal
    Vangie Beal is a freelance business and technology writer covering Internet technologies and online business since the late '90s.
    Get the Free Newsletter
    Subscribe to Daily Tech Insider for top news, trends & analysis
    This email address is invalid.
    Get the Free Newsletter
    Subscribe to Daily Tech Insider for top news, trends & analysis
    This email address is invalid.

    Related Articles

    Virtual Private Network (VPN)

    A virtual private network (VPN) encrypts a device's Internet access through a secure server. It is most frequently used for remote employees accessing a...

    Gantt Chart

    A Gantt chart is a type of bar chart that illustrates a project schedule and shows the dependency between tasks and the current schedule...

    Input Sanitization

    Input sanitization is a cybersecurity measure of checking, cleaning, and filtering data inputs from users, APIs, and web services of any unwanted characters and...

    IT Asset Management Software

    IT asset management software (ITAM software) is an application for organizing, recording, and tracking all of an organization s hardware and software assets throughout...

    ScalaHosting

    ScalaHosting is a leading managed hosting provider that offers secure, scalable, and affordable...

    HRIS

    Human resources information system (HRIS) solutions help businesses manage multiple facets of their...

    Best Managed Service Providers...

    In today's business world, managed services are more critical than ever. They can...