ATA100 or 66

[Jumby]

What is the difference and/or benefit of ATA100 hard drive as opposed to 66? And how do I know if I can use a ATA100?

[Randy_tx]

ATA 100 allows the HD to run on a 100 mhz bus instead of a 66 mhz bus. It is marginally faster (most people would never notice the difference in real world apps). The motherboard has to be able to support it (became available on mobo's in about Dec. 00 and the Hard Drive has to support it. Others might be able to give more detailed info on it.....frankly, since the performance boost is so little, I haven't given this "vaporware" much of my attention.

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"As hard as a rock & dumb as a brick"...Windows CEMeNT

[Jumby]

Thanks. I I'll be sure to wait till I get a new motherboard before I get a new hard drive.

[helldiverCDN]

The ATA100 does not refer to the system bus speed.

It means the maximum disk 'interface' speed in MB/sec.
Generally it is the maximum transfer between the disk on board cache and the system memory ( DMA mode ).
The internal disk transfers will still max out at about 40 MB/sec.

For more info on this see the following ( go to Utra DMA section) :
http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/if/ide/modes_DMA.htm


Cheers,

hell out

[Randy_tx]

I knew that I didnt know much about this subject....only that the increased speed was nominal http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/biggrin.gif

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"As hard as a rock & dumb as a brick"...Windows CEMeNT