PHOENIX BIOS
Additional information, simulation, and help
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Advanced Technology Attachment (ATA) is a standard interface for connecting storage devices such as hard disks and CD-ROM drives inside personal computers.
The standard is maintained by X3/INCITS committee T13. Many synonyms and near-synonyms for ATA exist, including abbreviations such as IDE and ATAPI. Also, with the market introduction of Serial ATA in 2003, the original ATA was retroactively renamed Parallel ATA (PATA).
In line with the original naming, this article covers only Parallel ATA.
Parallel ATA standards allow cable lengths up to only 18 inches (46 centimetres) although cables up to 36 inches (91 cm) can be readily purchased. Because of this length limit, the technology normally appears as an internal computer storage interface. It provides the most common and the least expensive interface for this application.
In computing, specifically computer data storage, a Redundant Array of Independent Drives (or Disks), also known as Redundant Array of Inexpensive Drives (or Disks), (RAID) is an umbrella term for computer data storage schemes that divide and/or replicate data among multiple hard drives. RAID can be designed to provide increased data reliability and/or increased I/O (input/output) performance.
Read-only memory (usually known by its acronym, ROM) is a class of storage media used in computers and other electronic devices. Because data stored in ROM cannot be modified (at least not very quickly or easily), it is mainly used to distribute firmware (software that is very closely tied to specific hardware, and unlikely to require frequent updates).
