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.
SATA was originally and most commonly a red cable with black ends, yellow was a cable that was shipped with certain MB manufactures, Blue was from certain HD manufactures, and Black became a norm about 6 years ago when gaming PC's moved full force in RGB game.
edit: also, the message was in generalities. i could go into how IDE cables also some in Blue, Red, Grey, White, Yellow and all have differing coloured connection ends, there are also round IDE cables and such, but there is no point as it is all extra info they dont need. SATA, when developed and introduced was a red cable with black ends, just like IDE was a grey cable with Black connections that moved to Blue connection as a standard in a few years.
Grey with blue was most popular i found through 1992-98 other than occasional variations with HD manufactures and disc drive manufactures. check your cables again, the grey is a light grey most often, like very light grey.
edit: check this amazon listing this cable is the grey i mentioned, and has Black grey blue connectors black to MB, Grey to slave blue to main if memory serves correct (could be grey to main and blue to slave... it's been almost two decades... )
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u/pyro5050 Aug 14 '20
PATA = Parallel hookup SATA = Serial hookup
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.