Promise ATA-100 card, or on-board ATA-33 good enough?

[jrichrds]

I have a Maxtor 20GB ATA100 5400RPM HD that according to tests by storagereview doesn't surpass a transfer rate of 33MB/second.

Is there any benefit in having this drive connected to a Promise ATA-100 PCI card rather than just the on-board BX-chipset UDMA33 IDE controller?

Possible advantage:
Better error correction with the ATA/100? A guess based on what I read about ATA/66 and up having some sort of CRC error checking.

Possible disadvantage:
ATA/100 PCI card less efficient than integrated IDE controller on motherboard? (No PCI traffic with integrated controller)

 

[JHeiderman]

What are you using the machine for? Is it just a spare PC for web surfing? Is it a HTPC? Will you be doing harddisk intensive applications? If it is just a spare machine for someone to use then the ata-33 should be fine. If you are doing lots of disk intensive applications with it (unlikely I would guess) then you "may" benefit from ATA-66 that the drive supports.

My personal opinion: It's an old BX board, hook it up, don't worry about it, and let it rip! ATA-33 was perfectly fine for a very very very very very long time.

- J

 

[jrichrds]

Ehhh, sadly enough, this is my main computer. I know...for most people here, a BX motherboard and 20GB 5400rpm hard drive is like ancient technology.

I've had the drive hooked up to the ATA/100 controller and to the integrated IDE controller, and don't notice a difference (as expected). But am curious anyhow which one would theoretically be better for a drive that doesn't appear to exceed 33.3mb/second.

 

[AndyHui]

If your drive cannot burst over 33MB/s (let alone STRs over 33MB/s), then there is no reason to use anything apart from the onboard ATA33 Controller.

 

[Jeff H]

jrichrds, performance wise, w/ that drive, I don't think you'll see any real-world differences. One difference you could see is in CD-R and CD-RW burning performance. By that I mean if you have a hard drive connected to your primary onboard IDE channel as a master, and either a CD or CD-RW drive connected as a slave, and a CD or CD-RW drive connected to the secondary channel, the Promise card would give you the option of having all three drives as single/master drives on their own channels. Just remember to put the HD on the Promise controller. Then you could put the CD as master on the primary onboard IDE, and the CD-RW as master on the secondary. This setup would allow you to do direct CD to CD-R/RW transfers.

 

[murphy55d]

Save your money.

 

[Derango]

Just a note here...Optical Drives like CD-ROMS and CD-RWs sometimes don't work very well on an external IDE controller...so don't get your hopes of using that ATA card with your optical drives. It might work, it might not work.

 

[Jeff H]

Derango's point is well taken. As he said, drives other than hard drives most often don't play nice on add-in controller cards.

 

[jrichrds]

I have a Promise ATA-100 card already, but just have my drive connected to the UDMA33 integrated controller. Won't using a PCI card as an IDE controller would actually make things slower than an integrated solution, especially if the connected ATA100 hard drive doesn't achieve an STR of over 33.3mb/second anyways?

Not that I'd notice a difference either way, but this is the place I come when I want to know whether my rationale is correct or not.

 

[flipdon]

i dunno bout going from ata-33 to ata-100.....but going from pio mode 4 to ata-100 was a HUGE difference. on an old BX board, i replaced an old Samsung 2.5GB drive with a new maxtor 40GB. and MAN, it was like a totally different computer. kinda put an old p2 on a respirator till i pulled the plug when its time came.