Ata Channels.

Device Manager, under IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers, shows 4 ATA Channels, each supporting 2 devices. That's 8 devices and yet the motherboard has 1 x IDE connector supporting 2 devices and 4 x SATA ports. What am I missing?
I'm using Windows 7 & XP on a partitioned hard disk.

 

My "guess" is your chipset supports that many but your motherboard maker simply did not integrate that many connectors on your board. Perhaps this is a smaller µATX board and that same chipset is used on a larger ATX board.

This suggests your chipset is a crossover set - part way between the old IDE interface standard and the new SATA interface standard.

Just checking one of my older systems and I see under IDE an additional controller too. Further investigation shows it is really for the memory card reader interface on the board - though I have no memory card reader connected.

 

I think your "guess" is spot on. It 's a Micro ATX motherboard.
The crossover chipset makes sense - I chose this motherboard because it has an IDE connector and 4 SATA ports.
Thanks for clearing this up.

 

Yeah, my two newest motherboards don't have any IDE connectors. Yet Device Manager in Windows 10 still has a section for IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers and within that section is where the "Standard SATA AHCI Controller" is listed.

Clear as mud, huh?