Integrated Drive Electronics (IDE) is a standard made for drives to reduce the clutter inside computers necessary to operate them. EIDE stands for Enhanced IDE, which improved the performance of the original "AT Attachment" interface (ATA) by changing some things in the structure of the protocol for communications with hard drives.

History

Western Digital came up with the idea of IDE in 1986. But it was not until the later part of the 1990s that the ATAPI protocol was developed, allowing more than just hard drives and hard drive emulators to be attached to the IDE interfaces in motherboards such as CD-ROM drives.

Benefits

EIDE and IDE hard drives put the circuit boards that operate them below their frame. Before the standard was invented, hard drive circuit boards were separate components that had to be attached to the computer motherboard, and they were very bulky.

Terminology Issues

When SATA emerged in 2003, IDE and EIDE were given a new name: Parallel ATA. The reason for this is because all drives by that time adopted the integration of drive electronics as a standard.

Misconceptions

Although IDE originally was developed for AT attachment hard drives, SCSI and SATA drives also have integrated electronics. It is improper to use the term "ATA" and "IDE" interchangeably as SCSI and SATA drives are also technically "IDE drives."

Size

IDE gave way to the possibility of having very small external hard drives, which have a width of only 2 1/2 inches. Also, other "on the go" versions of different kinds of drives were created with such a possibility.

Source:

ATAPI Specification