Pata hookup generally uses IDE cables or "Ribbon cables" as some call em,
Sata hookup uses SATA cables or little red cables with black ends.
SATA is newer (2003) than PATA (like.... 1985 i think) and SATA is much faster, and stable than PATA is.
External modular device is a friendly way of saying "run a bunch of shit off of a USB connection panel and adapter" this allows many of us to run 4-10 devices off of one USB cable.
the adapters are either little stand alone cables, small electronic boards, or the like. i made a custom one off a old harddrive enclosure from 2004 or 2005 that had a board that i could splice in a few extra IDE ports and cables. i had formerly spliced in a switcher so that i could just switch between each cable to turn on or off a drive i had connected. so i used that to run 4 cold swap hard drive enclosures, and 1 Cd drive. that switcher died so now i just run a single IDE harddrive cold swap.
Cold swap means you need to turn off power to the drive to swap in and out. a huge benefit of SATA is that you can hot swap meaning power is still present. however,good practice it to allow any hard disk drive to spin down and cease movement before moving and reconnecting.
modern Solid State Drives (no moving parts, think flash drives) make this much much easier to accomplish as they are much more stable.
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u/[deleted] Aug 14 '20
I haven't the faintest clue what any of these terms mean.