What is Ultra ATA?
ATA (Advanced Technology Attachment) refers to a common standard used to connect hard drives and other storage devices to a motherboard. It is also referred to as IDE (Integrated Drive Electronics), though the terms are not technically interchangeable. Ultra ATA is simply next generation ATA with improved transfer speed and architecture. There are several buzzwords surrounding Ultra ATA that can make it a little confusing for consumers, but each buzzword refers to an aspect of the standard that forms the overall architecture of Ultra ATA. UDMA (Ultra Direct Memory Access): To begin, Ultra ATA is based on a joint venture design between Intel, Quantum and Seagate. It is written around a specification that allows a hard disk or drive to transfer data directly to the computer’s system memory without having to use the CPU to direct this action. This saves processor resources and increases performance. Therefore, Ultra ATA is also called Ultra DMA, or UDMA for short. ATAPI (Advanced Technolo
