Hard Disk addition

[Julio]

I have an Asus P5a and it as 2 IDE ports called Ultra DMA 33. I want to add a second hard disk, and most of what I see are ATA 100. Can I buy one of these and install it as a second hard drive. I have read that the ATA 100s require a special cable and I wonder if this will plug right in ?
thanks

[jaida]

ata 100 can run at ata 33.

ata 100 or 33 refers to the rate of data transfer of the drives. 100 meaning 100 mb/s and 33 meaning 33 mb/s. You can run the drive at 33 it will just not use the maximum potential of the drive. Only if you run the drive at 100 will you need a special 80 pin cable.

So basically just hook the drive up with the 40 pin ide cable and your good to go.

[chapsieml]

All ATA 100 hard drives are designed to be backward compatible to the older IDE standards. Your new hard drive should come with the newer ATA(IDE)cable; We recommend that you use this 80 conductor 40 pin cable. The "blue" connector on the ATA cable plugs into the mother board, or IDE connector on the board. The "Gray" connector plugs into the slave drive; and the "Black" connector plugs into your primary-normal boot, or C: drive. Be sure to read the info supplied with the new drive- some old/new hard drive combinations have to be jumpered different ways in order to work together properly on the same cable. I have had to put some new and old drives on different cables for them to work. Also some times have had to copy or mirror an old drive to the new drive and then make the new drive C:. Also some times must set both drives to cable select to work properly. The newer ATA cable is recommend due to the additional grounding from the additional conductors , which cut down on cross talk-line noise- this allows faster data transfer, with out data corruption. Note: the ATA cable will have pin 20 blocked on the connector that plugs into your mother board. Some mother board receptacles are not keyed and pin #20 will be present and you will not be able to use the new ATA cable. If this pin is present you have three options: 1) Use the old IDE cable. 2) Carefully (my choice) drill out the plugged pin 20 on your new cable. 3) Or- (I don't Recommend) break off pin 20-you must be absolutely sure you have the correct orientation before you attempt this. If there is doubt don't do it.

[Julio]

Thanks, all. I was actually thinking of using the 2nd IDE port on the motherboard for the new disk drive. IDE 1 now has my present hard drive and the CD. That seems simpler and cleaner if it will work.
*crosses his fingers and shakes the chicken bones*