PATA and IDE are known to be disk drive interfaces. They are considered to be the same. The PATA is usually compared to SATA because they have different physical and electronic connections. There are a lot of people who get confused with the differences between hard drives, but if you are searching for the right hard drive to use, you should always make an effort to know more about it.
The more details that you know, the higher the chances that you are going to make a perfect choice. The data lines in PATA are usually parallel while those in SATA may cross each other. Knowing details about the primary storage device that you will use will help.