A drive technology which allows for storage devices such as disk drives to connect to a computer bus. The technology is an interface standard using parallel data paths or serial data paths and uses the underlying ATA and AT Attachment Packet Interfaces (ATAPI) standards. ATA was originally referred to as Industry Standard Architecture (ISA), then Integrated Device Electronics (IDE). The ANSI standard name is ATA. The serial form of ATA is SATA.
Synonyms
IDE, ISA