What are IDE, EIDE, ATA, Ultra ATA, and SATA and their difference?

IDE, Integrated Drive Electronics, was a popular interface starting about 20 years ago. It supports hard drives with capacities as large as 528 MB.

EIDE, Enhanced IDE, is still in use today. Fast-spinning, large-capacity EIDE hard drives are plentiful today. EIDE cables come in the familiar ribbon variety or in a less cumbersome rounded variety. EIDE hard drives typically accommodate data transfer rates as fast as 150MBps.

ATA, Advanced Technology Attachment, is another name for the EIDE standard and an extension of the IDE disk drive bus that specifies how a device interacts with ATA drive.

Ultra ATA is simply next generation ATA with improved transfer speed and architecture. Variations include Ultra ATA-66 which supports data transfer rates as fast as 66 MBps, Ultra ATA-100 with a maximum 100 MBps data transfer rate, Ultra ATA-133 with a maximum 133 MBps data transfer rate.

SATA, Serial ATA, is a storage-interface for connecting host bus adapters to mass storage devices such as hard disk drives and optical drives. The SATA host adapter is integrated into almost all modern consumer laptop computers and desktop motherboards. It has a maximum 150 MBps data transfer rate.