ATA 100 controller card for WD 120gb 8mb neccesary?

[Bruck]

I am running my old trusty self built pc. I built this thing like a monster, but this was a few years ago. I was running all scsi devices until I ran out of HD space. I have just purchased a 120gb special edition (8mb cache) ata100 western digital drive. I know that I will not NEED an ATA100 card to recognize or use the drive, but what kind of performance differences will I see? I am only going to use the drive for Mp3, video , data storage, all OS files and installed software should run on my 18gb scsi drive. Is it worth taking up a PCI slot for a performance gain?


example: my last size upgrade was an 80gb firewire maxtor drive with 5400rpm and only 2mb of cache. This drive was PERFECT for my use. So I am guessing i don't need to put an ATA100 controller in, since this 7200rpm drive w/ 8mb of cache should be a little faster than a firewire/eide bridge anyway.

 

[Vegito]

what kinda mobo do you have.. most of the time that u need an ata/100 is when ur bios is too old to recognize the full capacity

 

[thorin]

No it doesn't matter if it's ATA66/100/133 the drive does not push more then 66MB/Sec [actually according to storagereview it maxes ~54MB/Sec].

"most of the time that u need an ata/100 is when ur bios is too old to recognize the full capacity "

Sorry dude that's just wrong. The theoretical maximum speed of the interface has nothing to do with drive/capacity recognition.

Thorin

 

[chocoruacal]

Originally posted by: Bruck
I am running my old trusty self built pc. I built this thing like a monster, but this was a few years ago. I was running all scsi devices until I ran out of HD space. I have just purchased a 120gb special edition (8mb cache) ata100 western digital drive. I know that I will not NEED an ATA100 card to recognize or use the drive, but what kind of performance differences will I see? I am only going to use the drive for Mp3, video , data storage, all OS files and installed software should run on my 18gb scsi drive. Is it worth taking up a PCI slot for a performance gain?


example: my last size upgrade was an 80gb firewire maxtor drive with 5400rpm and only 2mb of cache. This drive was PERFECT for my use. So I am guessing i don't need to put an ATA100 controller in, since this 7200rpm drive w/ 8mb of cache should be a little faster than a firewire/eide bridge anyway.

In that entire post, I don't see one mention of EXACTLY WHAT MOBO YOU HAVE. Can't answer your question till you give us the basics. If your board has ATA100, then you don't have anything to worry about.

 

[thorin]

Originally posted by: chocoruacal

Originally posted by: Bruck
I am running my old trusty self built pc. I built this thing like a monster, but this was a few years ago. I was running all scsi devices until I ran out of HD space. I have just purchased a 120gb special edition (8mb cache) ata100 western digital drive. I know that I will not NEED an ATA100 card to recognize or use the drive, but what kind of performance differences will I see? I am only going to use the drive for Mp3, video , data storage, all OS files and installed software should run on my 18gb scsi drive. Is it worth taking up a PCI slot for a performance gain?


example: my last size upgrade was an 80gb firewire maxtor drive with 5400rpm and only 2mb of cache. This drive was PERFECT for my use. So I am guessing i don't need to put an ATA100 controller in, since this 7200rpm drive w/ 8mb of cache should be a little faster than a firewire/eide bridge anyway.

In that entire post, I don't see one mention of EXACTLY WHAT MOBO YOU HAVE. Can't answer your question till you give us the basics. If your board has ATA100, then you don't have anything to worry about.

It'd be really interesting to me (and many others I suspect) if you'd explain how it's relevant to a drive that doesn't even reach the limit of ATA66 spec to be attached to a ATA100 interface. (Especial when the drive in question is less then 137GB).

Thorin

 

[Sheriff]

There is no reason to put on a Controller card other then maybe a RAID Controller Card for adding another WD for RAID and more space in the future 😉

 

[Bruck]

Asus P2B-S Mobo.

 

[Vegito]

Originally posted by: thorin
No it doesn't matter if it's ATA66/100/133 the drive does not push more then 66MB/Sec [actually according to storagereview it maxes ~54MB/Sec].

"most of the time that u need an ata/100 is when ur bios is too old to recognize the full capacity "

Sorry dude that's just wrong. The theoretical maximum speed of the interface has nothing to do with drive/capacity recognition.

Thorin

i never say the speed has something to do with the capacity, most ata/100 controller has the onboard bios that'll recognize the full capacity, the free wd controller that comes with the drive does that, I know because I bought one for my friends abit bx6 r2 which doesn't see the whole 120 gb w/o the controller. I never say ata/100 speed gets you full capacity, the controller does not the interface

 

[bacillus]

Originally posted by: Bruck
Asus P2B-S Mobo.

iirc the controllers on that board are udma2 aka ata33.
if you don't require the full performance potential of the hdd then just attach it to the m/board ide channel & it'll run ata33 speeds.
suggest that you first install the latest bios for that board to allow the bios to see the hdd's full capacity

 

[Arcanedeath]

Your motherboard only supports ATA 33, that will severly limit the performance of your HDD (max transfer rate of 54MBs on an ata 66+ controler) so I'd suggest getting an IDE card, the HDD will still work on the slower interphase, but it will be even slower than an external drive since USB2.0 and Firewire both have more bandwith than ata 33. Hope this helps.... 🙂

 

[thorin]

Originally posted by: forcesho

Originally posted by: thorin
No it doesn't matter if it's ATA66/100/133 the drive does not push more then 66MB/Sec [actually according to storagereview it maxes ~54MB/Sec].

"most of the time that u need an ata/100 is when ur bios is too old to recognize the full capacity "

Sorry dude that's just wrong. The theoretical maximum speed of the interface has nothing to do with drive/capacity recognition.

Thorin

i never say the speed has something to do with the capacity, most ata/100 controller has the onboard bios that'll recognize the full capacity, the free wd controller that comes with the drive does that, I know because I bought one for my friends abit bx6 r2 which doesn't see the whole 120 gb w/o the controller. I never say ata/100 speed gets you full capacity, the controller does not the interface

Sorry I guess I didn't know what you were referring to when you said "an ata/100" ..... since ATA100 on it's own is simply an interface standard.

Thorin