Penguin
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An Acronym for Parallel ATA. This was the most popular way of connecting hard drives, optical drives and other block-storage devices to PCs, until SATA came along.

Often mistakenly referred to as IDE.

It is most commonly used in x86 desktop machines running Linux or MicrosoftWindows, and in cheap servers (ie not BigIron). The most typical devices include HardDisks and CDROMs.

Modern PATA HardDisks usually support SMART.