ATA-100 on ATA-66 Controller

[dachay2tnr]

I think I've seen this answered here before, but couldn't seem to find it...

I just ordered a new ATA-100 40 GB HDD; however the computer I'm installing it in only supports (I think) either ATA-33 or ATA-66. I assume there is no problem in placing the ATA-100 on this controller - except for not achieving ATA-100 performance.

Also, do I use the 80 ribbon cable, or the standard IDE 40 ribbon cable? Or does it matter?

 

[Emeric]

You shouldn't have a problem. Use the 80 conductor ribbon though. Depending on the drive brand, there is a downloadable utility that you can run to set the Hard Drive ATA mode. I'd download it and set it to ATA66 or ATA33 depending on what you find out. It will probably work find regardless though.

 

[dachay2tnr]

Thanks, Emeric. That's what I thought.

One last question. I'm setting up this new drive for audio only. Is the preferred configuration as follows:

IDE Contoller 1 Master: Operating system HDD
IDE Controller 2 Master: Audio files HDD
IDE Controller 2 Slave: CD-RW

 

[Emeric]

I'd slave the burner with the OS drive and leave the audio drive on the secondary master.

 

[RWhite]

An ATA-100 drive will work fine with a 66 controller, just not quite as fast.

IN THEROY it should work with a 33 controller too, but in my one experiance trying it it did not. Tried a Maxtor 40 gig ATA-66 drive in a 33 controlled, dead as a doornail. Then put it in a system with a 66 controller, worked fine.

As for drive arrangement, here's my preference:

Primary Master: Boot / system hard drive with programs
Primary slave: CDR drive
Secondary Master: Big fast Data hard drive
Secondary Slave: Regular CD-ROM or DVD

IDE controllers work best if you don't do reads and writes at the same time through the same controller. This way if you back up data files to CDR, dupe CDRs, or back up your system drive to your data drive, you are always doing only reads OR writes on each controller.

 

[Eurythmic]

Even if the new hard drive is 7200RPM, you'll never run up against the 66MB/sec limit of your IDE bus. You'll need to use the 80 ribbon IDE cable, though. But don't worry. ATA100 was a spec created because it looked good, not because IDE hard drive technology is fast enough to take advantage of it.

To give you an example, the current fastest IDE hard drive on the market, the Western Digital 1000BB, has a maximum read speed of just a shade over 40 MB/sec, and this is only at the beginning of the media. The maximum write speed is around 25MB/sec.

Now, if you had two WD1000BBs on one controller, then that ATA100 spec would definitely come in handy.