ATA66 in an ATA133 system?

My hard drives support ATA133...I have 2 taking up the primary channel.
My DVD-RW and CD-RW are taking up he secondary channel.
I also have a ZIP drive and a LS-120 which require the 40 pin cable.
The only way I can hook it up is through a PCI controllor card. It is only supported up to ATA66. If I plug the ZIP and LS-120 into this controller, will it slow the performance of my ATA133 hard drives to ATA66?

 

I don't think it will.

Since your LS-120 and Zip are on a separate controller with its own BIOS their performance should not impact the performance of the devices hooked to the primary and secondary channels on the motherboard.

Cheers,

ICE

 

Joe, this is the right way the old LS 120 do not benefit from ATA100 or 133 so 66 is ok and also use the other zip on that as well.
I have 2 LS 120 drives one internal and one external paralell drive. I could not find any drivers for the internal LS for XP but the external works fine with XP.
I was just wondering if you have your LS running in XP.
hawk22

 

I believe your comment answers your own question. A device that only supports ATA66 is only going to support ATA66 or less regardless of what you hook up to it.

 

That's not really what I was asking. I know if it only supports 66 it will only do 66 even if it's a 133 device.
My question was, MAIN IDEs on motherboard support 133. Both HDs are 133.
What I wanted to know was, if I put in a PCI controller that was only 66, would it drag the HDs down to 66 (even though they're on there own controller)
I've always been told your fastest speed is that of your slowest device...

 

Hi Joe Locke.

Each IDE port is a world unto itself. You have it set up exactly right. Each IDE port will run at the speed of the slowest device on that particular port.

You might get a copy of HD Tach which will give you a good transfer rate of the drives. I'm not sure if it will work with the cds or dvds but it might.

 

Hasn't this achieved the status of urban myth yet? I think this must have been true on much older machines and just never went away.

Gary

 

Hi.

YES! Mr. Chiles4 is absolutely correct and I stand changed.

I haven't run these types of tests in years but I put an ATA133 drive on a motherboard (ASUS, with ATA133 IDE ports) on IDE-0 by itself and ran HD-Tach. Then I attached a 6.5 ATA66 drive on IDE-0 as slave to the ATA133 and ran HD-Tach on both drives. The ATA133 did not change (other than minor decimal points).

I did not test with a CD or DVD drives but I will assume they will test the same since they are ATAwhatever and will run at their design speeds as long as the IDE port is rated at that speed or higher.

Years ago I ran this test and a fast drive (paired with a slow drive) did indeed slow down. We installed IDE cards that had a separate IDE port for each drive and got the speed back. We were running engineering data and needed as much speed as we could get with the mixture of drives available.

Next time I have the equipment set up conveniently I'll run the test with a mixture of cd drives and ATA133 but should be no difference than this test.

Thank you Mr. Chiles4 for the proper bump. Made me go do my stuff.

giles

 

Hi Christer.

Yes, I absolutely remember that thread. I was going to email you re this thread.

I did some tests when the ATA100's first came out and got two completely different test results on an ATA100 when an ATA100 was paired with an ATA66. I think the ATA66 was a CD so maybe that was the difference. Current test with hdds show a different result re both on the same IDE port. There is also a great possibility that various motherboards do not have the circuitry to allow independent speeds on the same IDE port so this could crop up again. I remember when the IDE ports were redesigned to allow drives of two different ATA speeds to run on the same port but a circuit change that allowed different ATA devices to run at their relative design speeds on the same IDE port went right by me. Very interesting. I'm going to have to look into this a little more.

(Edit) I still maintain that IDT does not refer to two devices running at their design speeds independently on the same IDE port but the curcuit change that simply allowed devices of two different ATA speeds to function on the same IDE port. That was the purpose of IDT at the time it was implimented.

giles