This connector is used for all IDE devices, most commonly ATA or UATA66/100 hard drives or CD/DVD drives. When connecting the IDE device cables to the IDE device connectors, maintain pin 1 orientation. The connectors are keyed to ensure proper orientation. The primary IDE connector is black and labeled "PRI IDE". The secondary IDE is white and labeled "SEC IDE".

Supported Features

• Supports 48-bit addressing. This allows drive sizes up to 144 petabytes (PB) or 144 million gigabytes (GB).
• The motherboard provides two independent synchronous direct memory access (DMA) bus-mastering PCI IDE interfaces that support fast IDE PIO Mode 3, Mode 4, Mode 5, Advanced Technology Attachment Packet Interface (ATAPI), and Ultra Advanced Technology Attachment (UATA) interface devices at speeds of 33/66/100.
• Compliant with ATA 4 and 5 specifications.
• The motherboard BIOS supports Logical Block Addressing (LBA) and Extended Cylinder Head Sector (ECHS) translation modes.
• The BIOS Setup Utility automatically detects the IDE device transfer rate and translation mode. This motherboard includes LS-120 support.

Normally, programmed I/O operations require a substantial amount of CPU bandwidth. In true multi-tasking operating systems, the CPU bandwidth, which is freed up by using bus-mastering IDE, can be used to complete other tasks while disk transfers occur. When used in conjunction with the appropriate driver, the IDE interface can operate as a PCI master capable of supporting Ultra ATA devices with transfer rates of up to 100 megabytes per second (MBps).