Storage Device Information

[Rusky]

The wiki could use a more complete summary of different mass storage interfaces/types/etc. Some of this should be simple to find from reading specs, but specs don't really give an overview of the different disk technologies, and I hope what's here represents the kinds of questions that come up when using the wiki. Here's most of what I've pieced together, but I'd like some help filling in the gaps and correcting the mistakes.

---

IDE is the electrical specification (and cable/connector type?) for ATA drives (but the name is often used to refer to ATA itself?).

ATA, retroactively named PATA, is a family/series of interfaces, including the baseline PIO and ATAPI which adds SCSI commands (what on earth is SCSI?) (is ATAPI useful for non-optical drives?). (what are the others?)

AHCI is a new something (interface and/or connector?) that replaces IDE.

SATA is a newer type of interface (and/or connector?) that extends ATA (some kind of compatibility mode? what additions does it make? I see passing references to SATAPI, etc.). It is also accessible through AHCI (as opposed to... ATA? IDE?).

---

An ideal place to put a summary of these (preferably arranged more comprehensibly than I've been able to do, in some kind of timeline/hierarchy/graph) would probably be http://wiki.osdev.org/Category:ATA, since that's linked from the front page under "harddisks" (although that link could probably be "mass storage" or something).

[Solar]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_ATA
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_ATA
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_H ... _Interface
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCSI

Both "IDE" and "ATAPI" are forwarded to "Parallel_ATA".

[Rusky]

Heh,

I'll see if I can add some links between wiki pages and maybe more comprehensive explanations.

[Solar]

Most people here know rather well what IDE / ATA / ATAPI / PATA / SATA / SCSI is...

[Rusky]

... and yet, I still managed to get confused when trying to figure things out. But nevermind, if nobody cares

[Solar]

Not quite what I meant. Just a warning that your would-be efforts might not find the welcoming audience you might be expecting, i.e. not wanting to see perfectly good effort going to waste. If you still feel like it, by all means go ahead.