How do I tell if HD ATA33 or ATA66?

[Brett]

When I boot up HD seen as LBA UDMA 2. What does this mean? I want to know if it is an ATA33 or ATA66Mhz. If it is an ATA66 does it need a different bus cable to take advantage of this extra speed? I recently downloaded an updated BIOS driver and saw that it included ATA66 compatability. There's not need to update the BIOS if my HD is the standard ATA33 output thus my question. My HD is 10G, 7500rpm and Seagate I think.

[sleddog]

Find the website for your harddrive's manufacturer. There should be a support section that you can search. Most likely the technical specifications for your particular model will be there.

------------------
sleddog
[sleddog.f2s.com] (http://www.sleddog.f2s.com)

[Paleo Pete]

If you want to "climb under the hood", sometimes it's also printed on the drive's label. I hate to take the case off if I don't have to, so if you know the drive's model number, I'd say go with sleddogg's suggestion, and check out the website. Seagate (http://www.seagate.com) usually has just about everything you want to know about their drives poasted...coasted...toasted...roasted...OK it's there...go look http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/biggrin.gif

I'll train this keyboard not to move around like that someday...

The Tech Page (http://www.thetechpage.com/cgi-bin/default.cgi) might be another good place to look, and it might be easier than digging through the Seagate site.

------------------
Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines!
Note: Please post your questions on the forums, not in my email.

Computer Information Links (http://www.geocities.com/paleopete/)

[kenja]

Some notes about "ATA66":

"UDMA 2" equates to UltraDMA33 (same thing as ATA33). To determine if your computer's motherboard can support Ultra66: the "southbridge" part of the chipset must be made for it. (Yours probably does, since the new BIOS includes it.)

If it does (I've checked this on Intel's website, for example), and your BIOS and hard drive support it, an 80-wire cable with 40-pin connectors will be needed. The blue connector must be attached to the motherboard, and a drive must be connected to the end of the ribbon cable. Also, only use the standard 18-inch length of cable (these requirements aren't necessary for Ultra33, in my experience).

If the motherboard's chipset wont allow Ultra(xx), a PCI IDE drive adapter board can be purchased. I've had good results using Promise Ultra33 and Promise Ultra66 adapters (things work best if these are just used for hard drives; connect CD-RWs, etc. to the motherboard).

Also, don't expect a huge performance gain when moving from Ultra33 to Ultra66; I've read that many "Ultra66" drives don't actually support the full speed burst data transfers (from the drive's buffer) of 66 MB/sec.

[This message has been edited by kenja (edited 02-05-2001).]

[kenja]

[P.S.:] Looking at "Highpoint-tech.com" (makers of the chip on my "Iwill" brand IDE RAID PCI adapter): I see ATA66 may also be called out as "UDMA 3" (although UDMA 4 is optimal). ATA100 is "UDMA 4+" or "UDMA 5".

IDE RAID (mode 0) allows using two (preferably identical) hard drives as a single "striped set". Both drives are written to at the same time, each receiving an alternate chunk of the data. Drive performance is increased, but not as much as with SCSI RAID. IDE RAID adapters have their own BIOS but not their own processor, so the mainboard processor must devote some of its time to the controller.

[Brett]

Thanks to all who contributed to my question. I simply went to the Maxtor site after checking the model number under the hood, checked it out under technical support and found it was only an ATA33. And thank you Kenja for your info concerning no real performance increase. No need to upgrade bios and I know where I stand. I have new question about games speed regarding HD performance. Thanks again.

[Brett]

New question in 'How does this work'.