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IDE Channels


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Is there ever a case where a hard drive doesn't need an IDE channel? Only thing that comes to my mind is a USB hard drive, and I'm not too sure about that one.

Edited by Aegis
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But for external hard drives (USB/Firewire), doesn't it still connect to an IDE cable inside of the HD case, which is then converted to a USB/Firewire signal and transmitted to the computer?

And regardless of what it actually is, I think the computer views the SATA controller as an IDE one, because if I try to remove the drivers for IDE, then my computer BSOD's with 0x7B (boot device error).

I guess the question is, can you still boot from an external HD if you remove the IDE drivers.

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USB, Firewire both use completely different interface and subsystem, although I know that many mobos can emulate a USB device as an IDE one and boot from a USB drive (not too sure about Firewire).

well me and aegis were talking about this. how come for sata, if you into the device manager and check ur sata hdds HWID, it says ide?
SATA and IDE both use the same software interface, only the hardware is different.
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If I remember correctly, the IDE, Sata Raid tie into the south bridge chip directly. The USB ties into the southbridge using another chip called "Connectivity" which also handles the pci, keyboard/mouse and all other periphials. This chip also resides on the southbridge. I might be wrong it's been a few years since I studied this and MUCH water has passed beneath the bridge.

jd

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so technically no matter what interface we use, its all really ide? b/c the problem aegis is having can get pretty annoying.
No, only SATA/PATA are both the same at the software level.

USB, Firewire, etc. use a different interface, both in terms of software and hardware.

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