IDE/ATA Access Modes

The most common type of hard disk for PC hardware is the Integrated Drive Electronics (IDE) interface. The IDE interface is so named because the controller chips that manage the disk are integrated into the drive itself, rather than on a separate host adapter card (as with SCSI). The official name for this type of interface is Advanced Technology Attachment (ATA), and ATA and IDE are often used interchangeably.

Note

Serial ATA (SATA) hard drives are rapidly taking over from both IDE/ATA and SCSI drives in highperformance server installations. SATA drives are generally handled using the standard ATA kernel interface in FreeBSD, and you should be able to configure and access them using the same methods as described in this ...

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