Maxtor Hard Disk. How to set ATA 133 to ATA 100?

[SamDav]

I have two Maxtor HDs. One is ATA 100 and the other ATA 133. My motherboard "MSI 645 Ultra" supports only UDMA 100.

First, is ATA the same as UDMA? And if yes why they use two different names?

When I start my computer, the mainboard shows my ATA 100 drive as UDMA mode 5 and my ATA 133 drive as UDMA mode 6.

When I?m in Windows XP professional, the IDE Channel window shows ?UDMA mode 5? for ATA 100 but ?Multi-Word DMA Mode 2? for my ATA 133. What is this mode?

I get this of course because my mainboard does not support ATA 133. What I want to do is to somehow switch the ATA 133 to work in ATA 100 mode so that I can get at least UDMA mode 5 in XP.

I have already searched every where on the official Maxtor site but I didn?t find anything and there is no forum there. Thanks in advance for any help.

 

[Barnaby W. Füi]

woah...interesting. theoretically it should default back to ATA100....i've never seen anything like what you're describing, but here's a bump for you at least

 

[SamDav]

By the way, is there any free software that I can use to test the speed of my harddisks?
And around what data transfer MByte/s should I get for my ATA 100 in UDMA mode 5?

 

[Kitros]

Does it work?

The multi word designation just refers to the transferrates. It won't register as a mode 5 because it isn't a mode 5 drive. Only ATA 100 is mode 5. It should be working, and the only thing you should be noticing is a difference in "labels". As BBWFooey said, it should default to 100. If it doesn't then something went wrong with the @ IEEE. Effectively, yes udma = ata.
UDMA - Ultra Direct Memory Access
ATA - Advanced Technology Attachment

So once again, does it work?

*hey WONG, that was your 2000th post!!! lol

 

[SamDav]

Yes it works. But how can I be sure that it works as ATA 100?

 

[SamDav]

OK here is the layout

Primary IDE ? Master: Maxtor HD ATA 100 - Slave: Creative PC-DVD 12x
Secondary IDE - Master: Maxtor HD ATA 133 - Slave: Pioneer DVD-R

I use of course ATA 100 cables which have a blue head that goes into the mainboard.
Also the IDE 1 on my mainboard is blue but the IDE 2 on my mainboard is black.
Does this mean that the IDE 2 channel do not support ATA 100?

Also I read somewhere that a DVD-ROM on slave may slow down a HD on master.
Is this true?

 

[SamDav]

Here is a speed test. I have the Pinnacle DV500 and it has a DV Expert that tests hard disks speed.
I get these results: All in Mbyte/s

ATA 100: Write: 15 Read: 28
ATA 133: Write: 15 Read: 15

My system is also installed on ATA 100. My ATA 133 is one big empty 80 GB drive.
As you can see, I don?t get a good result with the ATA 133 in read!

Also, are those numbers for ATA 100 good enough and normal?

 

[Kitros]

you must be one of those DV guys... hehe... like me.

I thought the 80GB drive came with a ata133 card.

Get sisoft sandra to really test your system. It also shows an average and compares your system to that.

I think it also shows all info about the HDD.

*you are over-thinking this one*

Get back to editing your pr0n.

 

[Bluga]

just use the ATA 100 cable.

 

[SamDav]

I just installed the sisoft Sandra and did a drive benchmark. For my ATA 100 it gives around 17000 which is equivalent to ATA U66 7200 rpm and for my ATA 133 it?s even worse, it?s around 12000. Should I try to connect both hard disks to primary IDE and the two DVD drives to secondary IDE? What should I try?

 

[SamDav]

I forgot to say that I didn't get the box version which includes a ATA 133 card.
I just bought the hard disk alone.

 

[tm37]

I have always run my harddrive off the primary, master and slave and then my DVD(m) and CDRW (s) off the Secondary.

In my current set up I only have one HD but My wifes has 2 master is HER drive and SLAVE is SHARED between for downloads and Docs and the like.

Also does The secondary support ATA100?

 

[ku]

it'll do it for u.

 

[GT578]

As suggested, put both harddrives on the primary....and the CD/DVD/CD-RW stuff on the secondary.

 

[Kitros]

I don't like to share my primary between 2 HDDs... seems to bog down with huge file transfers.

I would suggest getting an ATA133 card. Just return it if it doesn't give you desired results (say it's broken).

Very odd of you to score so low... Your bottleneck is seeming to be your mobo, but a seperate card may do the trick.

gl

 

[SamDav]

Thanks for the helps. I know that with my current configuration and speed, it?s more than enough to capture DV and have no lost frames. I?m just curious to know what is wrong. Here is what I did. I removed everything but the 45 GB ATA 100 hard drive. No second HD, no DVD-Rom no DVD-R. I only have one HD on primary master and still get the exact same speed results with DVExpert and Sandra : around 17000!

True, I don?t want to put both HDs on the same IDE because it slows down when reading from one drive and writing on the other. When I copy or encode a file from one drive to another, it is better to have them on separate IDEs. It also helps to have a more stable capture!

Oh I also tried my ATA 133 both on Secondary master and Primary slave with ATA 100 on Primary master and no DVD drives at all and the same speed results. 17000 for ATA 100 and 12000 for ATA 133. I also tried different cables!

 

[Pabster]

Consider an ATA/133 add-in PCI card. They're cheap and work well.

 

[Kitros]

It sounds like your final option... however, it is almost the cost of a nice, new mobo...

 

[SamDav]

Ok thanks everyone. Now I have another graphic card related question that I will ask in a new topic!

 

[theplanb]

you could.. try to manualy set the ATA133 drive as ATA100 in your bios and see what happenes..

 

[SamDav]

Interesting! How can I do this? Bios of ? Mainboard or Harddrive? If there is any with HD!

 

[Bagheera]

If your motherboard only supports UDMA-100, you will not be able to achieve UDMA/ATA-133 on your new hard drive. The drive, however, should be able to work on your motherboard, but it will only run at ATA-100.

If you wish to achieve ATA-133 for your new hard drive, you can do either:

1) buy a new motherboard that supports UDMA-133

2) buy an IDE/PCI adapter card that supports UDMA-133 devices.

 

[Strych9]

<< First, is ATA the same as UDMA? And if yes why they use two different names? >>

If I remember correctly ATA is the technology of integrating the controller on the drive itself. UDMA is the protocol controlling burst/data transfers rates. They are used interchangeably, however.

 

[SamDav]

Let's forget the ATA 133 for a moment. Does the speed result of 17000 good for an ATA 100 harddrive?