ATA 100 to ATA 133 Hard Drive worth it?

Civic2oo1x

Senior member
Jan 29, 2002
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I'm thinking about buying a 40 gig 7200 ATA 100 Western Digital for $84. The thing is I can also get a 40 gig Maxtor ATA133 for $92. Is it worth the extra money for the ATA133? And will it make a huge difference?
 

human2k

Diamond Member
Jun 21, 2001
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Dell has a damn sweet deal right now.........15% off everything this weekend with free shipping.......you can pick up Seagate Barracudas 80GB for $87 shipped............or if you want faster performance they have WD 80GB SE with 8MB Cache for $105 shipped. The best deal has to be cuda 40gb which is $63 shipped!!!!!!!!!!!!! Did I mention is next day shipping thats free!
 

guywithoutaclue

Senior member
Nov 22, 2000
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ata 133 makes no difference at all.


obviously if they name it ata133 there's a difference ... though in common tasks this may not be evident.... the theoretical yeilds of ata133 are approx 133mb/s as opposed to 100mb/s if you're not running software intense apps then you won't notice the few seconds that ata133 will save you...
 

rbV5

Lifer
Dec 10, 2000
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obviously if they name it ata133 there's a difference

The difference is the Large LBA Support of drives over 137GB's, if ATA133 saved you a few seconds(an eternity in computing terms) we'd all have ATA133 drives stuffed in our boxes.
 

Rhombuss

Golden Member
Nov 22, 2000
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ATA 100 = ATA133 in terms of burst/sustained speed rates.

ATA133 is just Maxtor's marketing hitch to fool people like guywithoutaclue, no pun intended! ;)
 

AnAndAustin

Platinum Member
Apr 15, 2002
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Like rbV5 pointed out, the only actual benefit of ATA133 over ATA100 is support for very large HDs (around 121GB+ IIRC). ATA133 does have 33% faster theoretical throughput BUT it is never likely to be of any use perf-wise, much in the same way AGP8x and AGP4x.
 

Alphazero

Golden Member
May 9, 2002
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Going from ATA66 to ATA100 is hardly worth it, let alone ATA133. Hard drives simply don't have enough speed, even with burst transfers.
 

billyjak

Platinum Member
Oct 9, 1999
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Foe 8 dollars more get the ata 133, maybe down the road you'll be able to take advantage of it.
 

Mikki

Golden Member
Jun 13, 2002
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I'll put my WD ATA100 80G SE drive up against Maxtor's ATA133 any time. The difference between ATA100 and 133 is nominal at best, but the 8mb buffer on the WD SE drives made a nice bump on my scores and is noticably faster. :)
 

nord1899

Platinum Member
Jun 18, 2001
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ATA 133 does two things, both have been mentioned in the thread, I just thought I would combine them into one post.

1. It allows for larger hard drives. ATA 100 could only go up to 137 gigs. ATA 133 goes way beyond that.
2. It allows for a higher transfer rate. ATA 100 allows for up to 100 mbits, ATA 133 does 133 mbits.

The first one is definitely something that you can see in the real world. I mean just look at the 200 GB drive just announced.
The second one though you would never notice. Just because the bandwidth is there, doesn't mean its actually used. No IDE hard drive is able to transfer enough information to exhaust ATA 100, heck I don't think they can even exhaust ATA 66. Storage Review has the numbers for you. So yes, theoretically, ATA 133 would allow for increased performance, but in the real world it just doesn't add up.

Things like the 8 mb buffer (versus the normal 2mb) in the WD Special Edition drives increase performance greater than ATA 133 over ATA 100.
 

Budman

Lifer
Oct 9, 1999
10,980
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Originally posted by: billyjak
Foe 8 dollars more get the ata 133, maybe down the road you'll be able to take advantage of it.

I dont agree with that,Is the hd going to get faster in the future?
rolleye.gif


save 8$ and get the ata100.
 

Sunny129

Diamond Member
Nov 14, 2000
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Originally posted by: rbV5
obviously if they name it ata133 there's a difference

The difference is the Large LBA Support of drives over 137GB's, if ATA133 saved you a few seconds(an eternity in computing terms) we'd all have ATA133 drives stuffed in our boxes.

true...while there certainly is a difference between ATA 100 and ATA133, it isn't noticeable in smaller HDs. just as AnAndAustin said, ATA133 drives have a 33% increase in throughput/bandwidth capability, but at the rate IDE HDs spin at, this bandwidth is hardly taken advantage of. it was the same story when ATA100 drives hit the market. ATA100 had a 50% increase in bandwidth over the ATA66 drives, but spinning @ 5400rpm, an ATA100 HD got you nothing as far as performance gain. even the newer 7200rpm HDs don't take full advantage of ATA100. at the time ATA100 came out, people were saying it would take a 10,000rpm HD to take full advantage of ATA100, so it would take and even faster spinning HD to take advantage of ATA133. speaking of which, have IDE HDs even hit the 10,000rpm mark yet?
 

NicColt

Diamond Member
Jul 23, 2000
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It comes down to bragging rights to the ATA133 bios. I believe that Maxtor own the rights to the ATA133 bios and RBV5 is right the new bios only adds support for large LBA Support of drives over 137GB's so anyone who want's to have their drives marked ATA133 needs to licence the bios from Maxtor.

It will do nothing for your dirve but for HD sellers it's a powerfull marketing tool for the tools.
 

AnAndAustin

Platinum Member
Apr 15, 2002
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;) Marketing damn marketing ... the wonder which brought us the wonderful GF4MX and Rad9000 gfx cards ... how wonderful LOL!
 

billyjak

Platinum Member
Oct 9, 1999
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It won't get faster but motherboard implementation of trnsfer rates might.
If price is a matter look here and you can get it for $72 which is $12 cheaper than your going to spend
Go Here to Order
 

Pariah

Elite Member
Apr 16, 2000
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Big Drive support has nothing to do with ATA133 it just happened to be released with the introduction of ATA133 by Maxtor. As with all other drive size limits, a BIOS upgrade will allow any ATA standard to add Big Drive support. There is no fee to use it, it is an open standard.

"is support for very large HDs (around 121GB+ IIRC)."

144 petabytes, 1 petabyte = 1000 terabytes

"for HD sellers it's a powerfull marketing tool for the tools."

Not really, no one but Maxtor supports it. All the other companies have said they are going to wait for SATA since ATA133 doesn't add anything worthwhile or significant.
 

Sunny129

Diamond Member
Nov 14, 2000
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also, there are still alot of chipsets out there that support only ATA33, 66, and 100. i beleive there are more chipsets that don't support ATA133 than do this early in the development of ATA133. it just became an industry standard not too long ago. again, with spin rate being a major bottleneck on HD bandwidth, only SCSI drives really exploit ATA100 and 133 HDs. IDE HDs don't see the performance increase b/c of such low spin rates...
 

Mday

Lifer
Oct 14, 1999
18,647
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HDD manufacturers are not adopting ata133 at all, only maxtor makes them...

why?

SERIAL ATA!!!!!!!!!!!!!

--

um, ata100, ata133, etc, the numbers refer to MEGABYTES!!!!!!!!!!! not megabits. idiots.
 

Chu

Banned
Jan 2, 2001
2,911
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>> I'm thinking about buying a 40 gig 7200 ATA 100 Western Digital for $84. The thing is I can also get a 40 gig Maxtor ATA133 for $92. Is it worth the extra money for the ATA133? And will it make a huge difference?

The Maxtor ATA133's are quieter then the Western Digital 7200RPM drives -- if this is a concern. (yes, both fluid and ball bearing models).

BTW, the Maxtor ATA133 model is signifintaly (which can be as little as 5% in the hard drive world) then the Matrox ATA100 model, but this has nothing to do with ATA133 vs. ATA100, but instead has to do with the new deisgn in their ATA133 drives.

-Chu
 

AzNKiD

Senior member
Apr 1, 2002
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kinda off topic a bit, i know the ata100 and 133 is almost nothing, but what about 66 to 100? would i feel a noticeable speed if i upgrade from my current ata66 to 100? currently, i have the WD120JB, but my mobo only supports ata66. i just wondering if my mobo is holding the hd back, or is it not that much to worry about? just note, the wd120jb is the 8mb cache model :)
 

Sunny129

Diamond Member
Nov 14, 2000
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AzNKiD, thats actually a good question. i'm wondering exactly where the limiting factor is located. i know that an ATA66 HD can only move 66MB/s at most, even if its connected to a mobo with a chipset that supports up to ATA100. but i'm not sure if an ATA100 HD can move more than 66MB/s if the chipset has nothing higher than ATA66 support. i mean whether you have an ATA33 HD, or an ATA133 HD, or anything in between, they all still use the same IDE cable and have the same pin grid on both the HD and the ATAXXX supporting mobo. so i'm confused as to the exact location at which bandwidth becomes bottlenecked.

Chu, i would spend $8 more and expect a quieter HD, but i wouldn't spend $8 more and expect a higher performing HD. not only will there not be a huge difference in performance, but there probably won't be one at all over an ATA100 drive. now if you are upgrading from an ATA33 or 66 you'll see some improvement, provided you buy a drive that spins at least 7200rpm. once again, the spin rate of a HD can really hold restrict the amount of data transfer in MB/s, and ATA100 and 133 HDs can't possibly reach their max bandwidths of 100MB/s and 133MB/s respectively, b/c IDE drives don't spin fast enough.
 

ceZium

Member
Jun 29, 2002
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The only way you could possibly notice any difference in ATA100 vs. ATA133 would be with benchmarks. So I say save the 8 bucks.
 

Ilmater

Diamond Member
Jun 13, 2002
7,516
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I got tired of reading half-way through, so if this has been mentioned, then I appologize. It's simply impossible to find 1 single benchmark anywhere that shows even the slightest increase of ATA133 vs a fast ATA100 drive. Yes, many theoretical benchmarks will show an increase in burst transfer rates, but that will never equal an increase in performance and there are a few reasons for that. Number one, the only time transfering something at 133MB/sec will help is (I bet you didn't see this coming) if you're transferring or reading an entire file that's over 133MB. Now I have a few videos on my computer that I might transfer from one hard drive to another that would move a little faster with 133, but in games and most other programs, you don't yet need to push that amount of information.... yet, but we'll be coming back to that. Second of all, Maxtor made that standard, and nobody else has bothered to jump on that bandwagon yet. Remember, I said that you won't see an increase over a fast ATA100 drive. Everyone else in the industry has been working on things that really matter in a pinch like seek times and cache. Maxtor hasn't bothered trying to keep up with the speed of Seagate, IBM or (my personal favorite) Western Digital, relying instead on their ATA133 standard to move units out the door. Finally, as I said before, these bursts are completely useless in the current environment. Few programs need the ability to move that much information at a time. Worse than that, the drives don't even get the kind of increase you'd expect given the "133" monicker. ATA100 moves at a real speed of around 66MB/sec. ATA133 moves at about 72MB/sec. Somebody check my math, but that doesn't look like a 33% increase to me. I did notice that somebody mentioned that it might not work at ATA133 if you have an ATA100 mobo. OF COURSE IT WON'T!! You can get a controller to fix that, but then you've really wasted some money on a worthless technology. Just in case you're still worried about the future, then realize that the future is not ATA133, it's serial ATA and it should be out in a little over a year. It will run at either 150 or 166, I can't remember which, but it doesn't really matter. The point is, ATA133 is a complete waste of money. Maxtor has lost the speed war in the hard drive arena and needs to do something more than ATA133 in order to stay in the fight.

By the way, in case you're worried about some kind of bias, I bought the computer I'm typing this on with a Maxtor 17GB 7200 RPM drive on purpose. About a year later, I put in a 40GB 7200RPM Maxtor. But that was then. After Maxtor released this "marketing trick" they call a standard, I went with WD. I've since bought two 80GB 7200RPM WD's, and my boot drive is now on a WD 800JB, Western Digital's 80GB special edition hard drive with an 8MB cache. Currently, it's not only the fastest hard drive on the market, but it's only slightly behind Seagate in the heat category as well. If you wanna spend extra money, spend it for one of these.
 

Ilmater

Diamond Member
Jun 13, 2002
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Sorry to post twice, but I have three quick things to say:

1) Sunny 128, saying "only SCSI drives really exploit ATA100 and 133 HDs" is an oxymoron. ATA is an IDE standard. IDE is not compatible with SCSI. Those are completely different things. While I'm on this subject, in answer to what somebody else said, no, there are no IDE hard drives that spin at 10,000 RPMs. They only come in 5400 and 7200 RPM flavors.

2) AzNKiD, while I'd like to say that you should run the fastest IDE hard drive on the market at ATA100, you won't see a difference in most applications. Game, spreadsheets, web browsers, etc. will all run the same at ATA100 as they did at ATA66.

3) Don't be ridiculous people. Unless you all have dog ears, you will not hear your hard drives. I have 5 hard drives, three of which are WDs, and I hear nothing more than the exhaust fan. It's a quiet case fan at that. If anybody has an IDE hard drive that's loud enough to hear over your case fans (you better have at least one), then you need to RMA it really fast! Something isn't right.