Hard drives: ATA133/100 vs. ATA66

ellisz

Senior member
Nov 27, 2001
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Sorry if this is a newbie question but what differences will I see with a ATA133/100 hard drive vs. a ATA66?

Newegg has this:MAXTOR EIDE HARD DRIVE MODEL # 6L040J2 40GB 7200RPM - OEM, DRIVE ONLY D740X Plus ATA133/100 2MB Cache Buffer <8ms Seek Time - 3 Year Manufacturer Warranty. 40.0gb 7200 rpm for $87.

I also saw on the Hotbuys board that Office Depot has a Maxtor HD 40gig 7200 RPM but is ATA66. The price is cheaper but not all that much. It is retail though ...

Is the one from newegg $20 better coupled with an EPOX 8KHA+ MB.

BTW, why does newegg not list this MB anymore?

Thanks, mike
 

ellisz

Senior member
Nov 27, 2001
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Is this an obvious question that I should search for? I made an attempt ...
 

puck

Member
Nov 30, 2001
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I'm sort of a Noob-ee myself so I can't help very much with HD insights. But I personally would spend the extra $20 for a drive that will be better in the long run. The new Maxtors with 133 are mechanically better than their older drives from what I've read.
As far as the Epox board goes, I just bought one from newegg for $105 yesterday. Don't know why you can't find one now.
 

Dunbar

Platinum Member
Feb 19, 2001
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It's just the theoretical burst speed of the IDE channel in MB/s (ie., 100/133MB/s.) Anything over 66 is useless with current IDE hardware. The important spec for hard drives is rotational speed and seek time (lower seek is better.)
 

oldfart

Lifer
Dec 2, 1999
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I wouldn't let the ATA interface speed be the deciding factor. Look at the tested speed of the drive. For example, here are some of the drives I have around here.

40 Gig IBM 60GXP ATA100 7200 rpm. It does ~ 43 MB/sec max. Way below maxing out the ATA66 spec
20 Gig Maxtor D740X ATA100 7200 rpm. It also is good for ~ 43 MB/sec max.
15 Gig WD ATA66 7200 rpm. It is good for ~ 25 MB/sec. Not even maxing out ATA33.
IBM Deskstar 6.4 Gig 5400 rpm ATA33. Its good for ~ 12 MB/sec. Almost at the top of PIO4.

Most drives have a faster ATA interface speed than they can actually use. An ATA66 drive can be just as fast as an ATA100 drive. Maxtor is a tough one. It depends on which model ATA66 drive is in that box. Maxtor bought out Quantum. It may be a Quantum drive, but who knows which model.

I'd get the D740X from Newegg. At least you know which drive you are getting. The D740X is a nice fast quiet drive.
 

Rhombuss

Golden Member
Nov 22, 2000
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ATA specs really aren't based on burst transfer rates. They're actually meant to get over storage limitations on the drives. By making the platters denser, they expand the max storage capacity of the drive, but in doing so, also increase the max theoretical burst rate; since the drive is more dense, more data can be read per rotation.

oldfart's right, don't buy using the ATA spec as a gauge, look around for the forums for these type of qualities: noise, average seek times, respective vendor, and most importantly, try to found out if the drive has a high frequency of failure. I know the IBM GXP 60GBs or 40GBs had a big problem with failure rates, so watch out for things like that.
 

Kingofcomputer

Diamond Member
Apr 6, 2000
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I've said this many many times already:
the maxtor retail hd at staples, officedepot, officemax, amazon, dell, whatever is already ATA100 long time ago, they just use the description from supplier which still hasn't updated yet, so still says ATA66.
 

kjmcdonald

Member
Dec 6, 2001
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While everyone is right that today's IDE hardware (even in the drives labeled ATAT133) can't produce data
fast enough to totally fill a 133MB/s ATA133 interface there are several reasons to buy ATA133 now.

The first is that the IDE controller negotiates down to the least common denominator for each IDE cable.
If you think you'll ever have another ATA133 drive on the same cable in the future (Say when ATA133
is the 'slowest' available) you don't really want the ATA66 or ATA100 drive you buy today to be holding
you back.

The Second reason for ATA133 now is that while the spinning disk may only beable to spit out 43MB/s
say, that gets read into a buffer, and then the drive transfers the buffer all at once as fast as the wires
will let it (133MB/s.) The buffer fills and empties many times during a timed benchmark so when the
time spent waiting between buffer transfers is factored in you end up with a score that pretty much
is the same as the speed the physical disk reads the data at. This is fine for one drive. But If you have
a second ATA133 drive on the same cable, It can take advantage of the time that the bus isn't being used.

You could probably make an ATA66 drive that could read the data off the disk at 43MB/s and a ATA133
drive that does the same. Tested seperately each of these will give you 43MB/s. But if you could see
how much of the time the bus was actually in use, you'd find *alot* more free time on the ATA133 bus.
It's this free time that a second drive can use. It's not just about getting the data in and out of one drive
faster - It's about the bus having the bandwidth to be able to fully utilize all the devices attached to
it.

This is the same reason that the SCSI bus is now upto 160MB/s and pushing 320MB/s even though
a good 10K or 15K disk would be lucky to hit 50 or 60MB/s - SCSI allows upto 15 disks on a bus now.
It needs to unload the data from each disk faster than the disk reads it so that it can unload all the
other disks also.

-Kyle
 

oldfart

Lifer
Dec 2, 1999
10,207
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<< I know the IBM GXP 60GBs or 40GBs had a big problem with failure rates, so watch out for things like that. >>


I think you mean the 75GXP's.
 

millsy

Senior member
Jul 26, 2001
495
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storagereview.com
allow you to compare the speeds of different Hard Drives. The new Maxtor ATA133 I compared against the IBM 60GXP and they were quite similar. This was using the standard ATA100 bus.
So if you think about it, I would go for the Maxtor as you have planned for the future even if it doesn't get used for a while.