Enhanced Small Device Interface

Hard disk drive standard created in mid-1980’s by a consortium of manufacturers leaded by Maxtor. The idea was to create a hard disk standard more reliable than ST-506.

ESDI hard disk drives had a certain level of control embedded on the hard drive itself.

The main problem was that this standard continued to have a controller board outside the hard disk drive, not solving the biggest issue regarding ST-506 standard.

Since IDE standard was created around the same time and on IDE hard disk drives the controller board was embedded on the drive logic board, it was a far better solution than ESDI standard.

Its cable system is equal to ST-506: it uses a 34-wire flat cable for data and a 20-wire flat cable for control.

The maximum transfer rate of this standard was 24 Mbps (megabit per second) or 3 MB/s.

This standard wasn’t widely used.

Originally at http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/dictionary/term/95

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