In my recent quest for large 8051 memories, I came across several IDE interfaces. From what I can tell, using a bit
banging method should be simple to implement, but I am confused
about several of the different IDE standards.

Keep in mind I understand I will not be implementing any file system, the information stored and read from the disk does not ever need to be transferred to a PC. The data being read or written will be at the lowest level possible.

From what I understand, once addressed, that sector is 512 bytes in size. Would the drive read the entire 512 bytes at once into its internal cache, or would I have to create some type of clock from the 8051 for the interface to transfer each byte. I am only concerned with doing 8-bit data transfers.

I did check the FAQ and looked at the two forum topics detailing this, but they were not recent. Are there any other users here that have attempted such? (The drive I am attempting to use is a WD Caviar 2420 (420mb) )