ATA/66 on ATA/33 motherboard

[mykel]

Ok... I know that running ATA/66 HD at 66 is faster and better.. My question is, can I still run it on ATA/33 motherboard?? To be specific, I bought a Maxtor 27.2 GB ATA/66 2MB buffer at valueamerica.com for $139 ( talkin about cheap ).. Now it doesn't say that it supports the ATA/33 motherboard.. Can I still run it on my motherboard? And also, will I get the ATA/33 performance out of the HD??
btw, I'm running it on Epox MVP3C motherboard.. Another question, will that 2MB buffer benefit me???

[This message has been edited by mykel (edited 10-19-1999).]

[Donkey]

As far as i know the drive will just default to ATA 33 with no other side effects. This would also happen if you were not using the correct cable to connect the 66 drive to the supporting motherboard.
Apparently the diff between 33 and 66 on a desktop machine isn't much anyway so you won't be loosing out too much.

[Susan]

Here's some info from Maxtors site

Any EIDE drive can be used on an older system. The hard drives performance is
reduced to the maximum capability of the system it is installed in. If a UDMA/66 drive is installed in a system with a maximum capability of UDMA/33 then the UDMA/66 drive is limited to UDMA/33. If a UDMA/66 or UDMA/33 drive is installed in a system with a maximum performance of PIO Mode 4 then the drives are limited to the system PIO Mode 4 performance. The older the system the more limited is its performance. In older systems where UDMA/66 performance cannot be achieved
the use of the 80-wire UDMA/66 IDE interface cable is not required. If this cable is
available Maxtor recommends using it on any UDMA drive as it will improve data integrity on any system.

[TonyMan]

The folks above are right. I use a Maxtor 10gig and it just defaults to UDMA33. I have seen that the uncached speed (using Wintune) has increased about 50%. I believe this is due to the rpm changing from 5400 to 7200.

Go for it.

[bigslammer]

awesome deal that you got there is it the sign up and get a $100 rebate towards any purchase?

[mykel]

First of all, thanks you guys..... I knew that this messageboard is really the best.. Bigslammer yeah, that's the one w/ the $100 instant rebate... When you purchase anything above $200, you get $100 off using your VISA... And the good thing on this is it only takes 2 days ( probably because I'm here at the east coast and their warehouse is in NJ ).. So yeah, I recomend you guys to go on valueamerica.com ( check the steals & deals messageboard for the right link with the instant $100 off ).. Again thanks guys.... /forum/smile.gif