Hard drive ATA settings?

Hi All. According to Aida 32, my hard drives are all ATA100 with the exception of one, which Aida reports ATA133. That drive is a slave to one that is reported as ATA100.

My understanding has been that ATA133 is a faster interface. Is that correct?

If so, the question is, is this a characteristic of the drives?

If not a characteristic of the drive, the is there some setting that can be changed to have the drives operate at the ATA133 interface?

To all you dads out there, Happy Fathers Day!

Martin

 

ATA100 is very satisfactory.

Yes to this and to the next question as well. However this is a negligable difference, and not worth fretting about; i.e., if you could somehow get them all to run at 133 you won't be able to tell any difference in your machine's performance.

 

Hmmm: Sparrow, thanks for the information, but you forget, I am a member of Tweakers Anonymous. (charter) That part where you said: "not worth fretting about" may apply to normal people, but not to members of my group.

And when you say: "You won't be able to tell any difference in your machines performance ", you are forgetting that I will sometime in the future look in Aida32 and see "ATA100" and feel that clutching in my chest.

It is bad enough when my machine boots I see DDR 333, when I expected DDR 400 and discovered the board and memory I bought does not support it.

I had to attend 30 consecutive Tweakers Anonymous meeting to overcome my feelings of inadequecy and stupidity. I am still haunted with those feelings every time this machine boots. To say nothing of the fact I do not have Serial ATA drives running and had I waited a few months before building this machine, could have had DDR 800.

It's enough to drive a person of my persuasion to start a shopping list for the parts of their new machine.

But, then you said: "if you could somehow get them all to run at 133" gave me hope, however so slight, that this was in the realm of possibility.

Therefore, in the interest of my peace of mind and my children's college fund, I beseech the members of this board who may have some knowledge of how to "get them all to run at 133" to sacrifice a bit of their time and guide me out of this desperate situation.

Martin

 

Martin, I feel your pain (Tweakers Anonymous In order to take advantage of the ATA133 speed (33% faster than ATA100) you need to use the 80 wire/40 pin cables. Assuming that you are using the 2 IDE connectors on the M/B, they must be ATA133 capable also. Then ANY drive connected to that cable must be ATA133 in order for the system to operate at that speed. In other words if you have an ATA100 drive and an ATA 133 drive on the same cable, connected to your primary IDE connector , BOTH will operate at ATA100. The system will run at the speed of the SLOWEST drive connected on that cable. Hope this helps a little.

 

Hi Martin,

In Aida32 > Storage > ATA:
"Max. UDMA Transfer Mode "
"Active UDMA Transfer Mode "

Check if your motherboard supports ATA 133 (UDMA mode 6, I think).

Read here:
http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/if/ide/modesUDMA-c.html
(written before ATA 133)

Matt

 

Hi TJ IT, Thanks for the post, it helps a lot. All of the HDDs (6) on this machine are relatively recent, all capable of ATA133.

I guess then, I'll have to look at the cabeling and the interfaces to see which interfaces are capable of that speed increase and try to sort out why the slowdown.

In addition to the MOBO's (ATA 133 capable) 2 IDE ports, running 1 ATA HDD and 3 optical drives, it has 2 integrated RAID/ATA/SCSI ports currently running 4 ATA IDE HDD, and a PCI IDE card running one HDD and one optical drive.

All, except the drive connected to the PCI card, are connected with rounded, supposedly 40 pin 80 wire cable. The HDD connected to the PCI card is connected with a standard 40/80 ribbon cable. (ran out of rounded cables)

Got to figure out which drive is running at what speed and why, since all are capable of ATA 133. Wondering if those rounded cables are faulty or not to specs.

Thanks again,

Martin

 

Martin, from pcguide:

Think you need to use the harddrive manufacturer's UDMA utility. I used one to change a drive from UDMA mode 4 to mode 5 (ATA 66 to ATA 100).

Matt

 

Hi Mattman: Well, thanks. There are only two drives listed under storage, ATA. I don't understand this since only one is connected to the MOBO IDE channel. Maybe the other one listed is the one on the PCI card. I'm going to have to poke around some more.

The two drives which show up in ATA storage on Aida32 show that the Max ATA transfer rate is ATA 100 UDMA 5. So, I have to do some more checking, 'cause I think I remember when I bought all drives they were supposedly ATA 133 capable.

When you say using the MFG's UDMA utility to change them, do you think that's possible on drives listed in Aida as Max 100 ATA?

Thanks for your help on this.

Martin

 

Aida32 may be misreading the information. If you go to the manufacturer's website and look at the specs you will know for sure. Some manufacturers haven't bothered making ATA 133's because there is only little advantage over 100's (like sparrow said).

But..don't try to set a 100 at 133 (they will have warnings on this and I think you can guess the consequences)

Matt

 

Martin, Martin -

Will small wonders never cease? If you are running any Western Digitals in there other than SATA (and you have no SATA drive) you're SOL - they are all 100's. Most of the Maxtors and Samsungs sold these days are 133's, but WD's, Seagates & Hitachi/IBM's are primarily 100's. Regardless, Sparrow told you right - there is no way in Haiti that you are going to notice a difference other than satisfying that TweakAnon addiction of seeing double threes instead of goose eggs. And, if anyone has way to make a 100 run at 133, I'd sure like to hear about it. (I imagine one would also have the ear of a couple hundred thousand engineers.)

Side note - I can't detect one modicom of difference between a Raptor 36.7 150ATA with a 5.2ms seek time and a plain old WD400 100ATA with a 8.9ms seek speed - Neither does PCPitstop and I'm past 1500 there.

Personally, I think its about time for you to get started on a new box and the "ultimate cure ". That Dragon must be going on at least 6 months to a year by now. Hehehe ....... You Georgia Guys - Love em' and leave em'? 100 vs 133? TweakAnon huh?

 

Hi Rockster, well, if that's the way it is, that's the way it is. Goodbye college fund.

You know, I don't remember how old this board is, less than a year, not much more than 6 months. You should remember, you helped me set it up, remember the SCSI vs. IDE boot?? It was close to the cutting edge then, just before the KT600s came out. Seems a shame that at less than a year old it is an obsolete system.

Just my competitive nature, I don't like being 2nd, and 3rd is too low to even contemplate. The truth be known, for what I use this sytem for, if I wasn't so impatient, it does anything I ask of it. The only real knock is it takes so long to upload AVI, transcode and record DVD. I just added an 8X DVD burner 'cause the 4X was just too slow. But, polishing up my crystal ball, I see that 16X, maybe even 32X will be out before I finish recording my first DVD on the brand new drive.

What I need now is some software that would upload video from my Mini DVI camcorder while it is running in fast forward while simultaneously recoding it to MPEG 2.

Other than that, I'm not a gamer, not into downloading music, so for my financials, email, surfing, and with the DSL line, this is as much machine as I will ever need. My goodness, I have 630 Gigs of storage now, probably could hold the library of congress and then some. My first machine, a 1998 IBM Aptiva, came with 13 gigs, and I never got over 8 gigs filled. But with an hour of AVI video taking up to15 Gigs, I may fill the 630 by the end of this year.

I'll probably build a new machine soon anyhow, just waiting for PCI Express, DDR800+, the new Athalon socket (don't remember the number) & the cash to get an Athalon 64. Besides, building a new machine is fun, it never ceases to amaze me when I plug it in, hit the power button and by golly, it works! No one could be more surprised than I am.

My conscience won't let me raid the college fund, darn it.

I thank all for their input, I will check drive specs on line and if any are ATA 133s, I will try to get them set up to run that way, I just can't help it.

Martin
Executive Vice President, TweakAnon,
North Central Georgia Chapter

 

Hehehe .......
I can relate. Got the same or at least a similar addiction. The tiniest little "could it be better" issue gets a lot of attention. Wouldn't have it any other way. Where's the national convention being held next year?



Rockster2U

Probational Pledge, TweakAnon
Northshore, New Orleans Area Chapter

 

I'm not sure, we're trying to find out if Torvald's hometown has enough convention hotel space. One member suggested Gate's hometown and he was expelled by unanimous vote.

Martin

 

Get a 133 pci card?

martinr121,

You can return your psi card within 30 days for an exchange - you need to call JDR's 800 number for an RMA#. Talk to tech support to be certain it's what you want.

 

Hey Sparrow, Thanks, but for now I'm satified. (Lord, did I say that?) At least until I build a new machine. Probably later this year toward fall. Athalon 64 beckons.

Appreciate all the help from each of you.

Windows bbs is the greatest.

Martin