for those of us who aren't up with the latest acronym, what exactly is PATA and SATA, and should I already know??
You should already know ;)
ATA is/was the "new" name for IDE (Integrated Drive Electronics). ATA (Advanced Technology Attachment) is the official ANSI (American National Standards Institute) name for IDE.
S/P are Serial and Parallel, respectively. SATA is the "new" technology, and since it has come into use, we had to start using PATA (instead of IDE) to tell them apart.
So, generally speaking, they are the names for the interfaces connecting your mainboard to your hard drive.
Older technology used names like RLL, MFM, ESDI. Still commonly used on high end systems are SCSI and sometime FC and FC-AL (Fibre Channel-Arbitrated Loop).
-- Lost in Tokyo, Keith
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