Some Questions............

[ian2002]

I will soon be building a new system and have some questions.

I have 2 new HDDs given to me a Maxtor D540X 120GB UDMA 133 and a Maxtor D740X 80GB UDMA 133.

Can someone explain what UDMA 133 is? What cable do I use ATA 100 cable, IDE cable, how does a ATA Cable differ from an IDE cable? Do I need a certain type of Mobo? Im not interested in RAID can these be used on a non RAID system?

Thanks for your time.

Ian
:)

[BipolarBill]

UDMA 133 requires a 64-bit PCI controller. This can be built in to the mainboard or added. If it's added (in the form of a card), you still need a 64-bit PCI slot to get ATA/133. The 64-bit PCI slot is nearly twice as long as a 32-bit conventional slot. If you don't have it now, you may as well look at a motherboard with the controller built-in.

Is it worth the effort? I don't think so. The real performance increase over ATA/100 is probably only 15%. I wouldn't trash my motherboard for that.

[ian2002]

OK.

But I can still use these Drives on a Mobo that supports ATA/100 with a ATA cable?

Im pretty new at this.

Thanks

[BipolarBill]

Oh yes. You do need the 80-wire cables for any drive over UDMA33 though.

[Bovon]

This about the same as has already been said, but maybe just a bit differently.

Ata and DMA are pretty much the same thing. The cables that are now used with the ATA 66 and above drives are IDE, but they are 80 wire ribbon cables instead of 40 wire. The connectors are the same, e.g. 40 pin connectors. Nothing has changed, the 80 wire ribbon cable has an extra ground wire inbetween each 'live' wire...this reduces cross talk at the higher transfer rate of the hard drives.