ATA 33 VS. PIO mode 4

[Brian23]

I currently have a 13GB 5400RPM Western Digital HD in a Celeron 366 PC with a 10Mbps 3com network card. It's running ATA 33. I'm using it as my network's main data drive. My network has 4 client PCs. My question is what kind of performance hit will I take on this drive if I move it to a different PC that only has PIO mode 4, but it has a 100Mbps netgear network card?

 

[thorin]

Check the HD Interfaces and Standards FAQ.

Well it depends on the actual model of drive, but chances are on a 13GB 5400rpm drive you won't notice the difference between ATA33 FastATA (PIO Mode 4).

Thorin

 

[majewski9]

yeah I would stay with ATA 33. I have had ata 33 drives and pio mode 4
drives. There is a major difference between them! Pio mode 4 can get a max disk throughput of only 10.5mbs! An ATA 33 can get a 33.3mbs throughput! A controller card would solve your problem nicely! An ATA 33 PCI controller card is very cheap and would give you the same performance as your current hard drives controller.

 

[Brian23]

Thanks for the FAQ link. One thing I was thinking about though is that while I have it in the Celery PC I only have a 10 megabits per second (about 1.25 megaBYTE per second) network card. If I put the drive in the 4x86 PC then I'll have a 100 megabits per second transfer rate. So theoretically, it would go faster in the 4x86 since PIO mode 4 is 16 megaBYTEs per second and it has a 100 megabit per second (about 12.5 megaBYTEs per second) network card. Right? But thats just in theory, does anybody know what might actually happen performance wise? What would be the best way to benchmark this stuff? And where can I get a good deal on one of those ATA 33 cards just in case my drive stinks in PIO mode 4?

 

[SocrPlyr]

you would be luck w/ a 100Mbit card to pull at maybe 60Mbit (guess...) you have to remember the computer on the other end is probably your bottleneck anyways... unless it is really fast...
in otherwords i wouldn't worry about ever hitting the maximums of a 100Mbit lan card on a general network...
good luck

Josh

 

[Rickr]

Is getting a new 100Mbit network card for the Celeron an option? They are pretty inexpensive these days!

 

[Brian23]

I can't get a 100Mb card for the celeron b/c it only has 3 PCI and they are all full. The reason I want to move the hard drive is because my brother needs a computer and I was gonna give it to him but put a different HD in it. I wouldn't think that the client PCs on the network would be the bottleneck because they all have 100Mbps network cards and they are all fast. (Athlon 800 range) The PC that would replace the Celeron server is a AMD 5x86 160MHz. It's about as fast as a Pentium 90MHz. It shouldn't have trouble handling the internet trafic, but I really don't know how this HD will run in it. Are there any decent network HD benchmarking packages (free) out there that I could test with? or do any of you know how it will perform?

 

[Brian23]

^bump^