UDMA66 in an older motherboard

[DireWolf]

Hi all,

I'm thinking of upgrading my comp, basically to the point of building a new box and selling a new one.

Obviously, I'd like to transfer all my files across. My current plan is to buy a new hard drive (UDMA66) and fit it to my old intel BX motherboard as a second HD, and copy the files across that way.

I suppose my question is will this work, and is there a better way?

TIA

DireWolf

[djurom]

You don't have to be worried about that because it will work, but you only won't be able to use that ability to perform transfers at 66MB/s. You can expect only what your mobo supports.

[Fingers]

Yes, it will work. No, there probably isn't a better way. UDMA/ATA/66 hard drives are fully backward compatible with your ATA/33 controller.

Don't worry about not having full ATA/66 support because current HDD's aren't capable of sustaining 33MB/second transfers anyway. The 66MB/sec designation only relates to theoretical max. burst transfer, and is only beneficial if the data you want to transfer happens to be in the relatively small disk buffer.

Rotation speed is the most important factor in determining HDD performance. Go for 7200rpm or higher.

[DireWolf]

Thanx all. I was probably going to go for an IBM GXP, since the prices are going through the floor in the UK. Comments?

DireWolf

[NDC]

I second what Fingers said. DMA33 and DMA66 won't show noticeable differences. But 7,200rpm Vs. 5,400RPM is another story. http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/smile.gif

[krusty the klown]

Yeah, you can get some good deals in the UK on IBMs - defin8ly go for the 7200 with 2mb cache, as there's not a huge difference between 5400/ATA66 and 7200/ATA33.

Have a shuftie here:
http://www.scan.co.uk/today.htm

Keep checking them out - they've had IBM Telesto (?sp) on offer several times: it changes daily.

No probs using ATA66 drive in a 33 hole.... but you might want to consider an ATA66 controller card (or even an ATA100 controller card) if you've got a free PCI slot. I got one of the Hot Rod 66 ones for about £35quid and it was easy enough to install: you've just got to make sure that BIOS doesn't go searching for HDDs on the mobo IDE channels when there aren't any: it just slows the boot process down.

You'll need an ATA66 cable to achieve the data transfer rates (one should be supplied with the card). You can have 2 ATA66 devices on the same channel, but if you put 33 and 66 on the same channel, that channel reverts to 33.

I reckon you won't be dissappointed if you shell out the extra 35 quid for a card and take advantage of the new drive's faster performance http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/smile.gif

[Fingers]

If you have a compelling reason to get a IDE controller card, that's fine, but don't think ATA/66 is going to provide better performance, it won't.

Here are the tests.
http://www.storagereview.com/welcome.pl/http://www.storagereview.com/map/lm.cgi/ata66?
http://www.hwupgrade.com/hd/ata66_vs_ata33/

[Jonty]

I agree with Krusty, I recently bought a Promise Ultra100 card for £45 and its great, I have a Quantum ATA66 hanging off it as, like yourself, my mobo is a BX and only supports 33.