is SATA an IDE interface? - practice test question

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I am preparing for the CompTIA A+ 1001 exam and have the following question in the practice test: which two common types of IDE interfaces are used in computers? The answer to this question is PATA and SATA.

To be honest, I wasn't expecting SATA as IDE interface.

SATA and PATA are bus interfaces, is it right?

AHCI and IDE are transfer protocols.
I know SATA is backwards compatible, but AHCI is dedicated to SATA, isn't it?

Is the practice test's answer correct? Can anyone explain why SATA is IDE interface, not AHCI?

Hey @Maciej-Staniec thank you for reaching out to us on this. The answer of IDE interfaces being both PATA and SATA is wrong.

IDE/ATA/PATA are the same interfaces (with revisional changes in the standard)

The Advanced Host Controller Interface is a Serial ATA standard that was introduced in SATA ii (SATA 2.0) and added several features to the SATA interface such as Native Command Queueing and the ability to hotswap drives.

In BIOS/UEFI there are 3 discrete modes of operation:

• IDE (PATA) = default mode of operation in BIOS-based systems
• ACHI (SATA) - default is mode of operation UEFI-based systems
• RAID - for building RAID arrays.

I hope this helps you with this and your "gut" instinct is correct! Great job!

Hi Wes,

Thanks for your answer.

If the answer is wrong in the practice test you recommend, I am disappointed.

How am I supposed to know whether the rest of the kaplanlearn platform questions and answers are correct?