Advanced Technology Attachment

Advanced Technology Attachment (ATA), also known as IDE, Parallel ATA, PATA and ATAPI (Advanced Technology Attachment Packet Interface), is a standard interface maintained by X3/ INCITS committee T13. It is used to connect components such as CD/DVD drives (and writers) and hard disk drives (HDDs) to a motherboard inside a computer to interact with the other components and operating system. Serial ATA, or SATA is now also very common for storage devices connecting to motherboards.