Question about having a ATA66 and ATA100 on the same ide channel

[rsales]

If I put a ata66 drive and an ata100 drive on the same ide channel, on the same cable, will they both run at the speed of the slowest drive or can they run at different rates?

 

[mithrandir2001]

I think it depends on the controller they are connected to. I believe my Promise Ultra100 TX2 card will automatically use the fastest mode any device on a cable is capable of. However, some mobo integrated controllers throttle back to the mode of the slowest device.

You should be OK mixing those two. The worst that could happen is that the ATA100 device won't burst over 66MB/sec.

 

[TunaBoo]

AFAIK, all chipsets that support ata 100 will run bot hdevices at full speed.

 

[RedShirt]

Nope... They will run at their own speeds. I wonder if Noriaki will have to come back in here and explain it all

If you can, put them on separate channels because only one drive can be doing something at a time if you have two on the same cable.

But they will run at their rated speed. ATA 66 and 100 would run at 66 and 100 respectfully.

 

[rsales]

What I am doing is installing a new larger hard drive in place of a smaller that I use to image all the computers on my home network. Cheap back with Ghost. When I got the new Maxtor 60 I also got the ATA100 pci controller since the computer is only ata33 and it's a cheap(free with rebate) upgrade to ata100. I will switch around some drives now so this computer will end up with a drive that only goes to ata66 and the Maxtor 60 which is the ata100. So I would like to have the 66 running at 66 and the Maxtor 60 ata100 running at 100. I just didn't know what would happen if I put them on the same cable/channel. Didn't know if it works like scsi does or not for speed with mixed speed devices.

 

[m2super]

Both drives will run at the slower drives speed!In your case ata66!

 

[Pabster]

Let's remember that there's absolutely no difference between ATA/66 and ATA/100. There isn't a single IDE hard drive that can sustain 66MB/s let alone 100MB/s. In fact, most IDE drives barely utilize ATA/33 on rare occasion. So I wouldn't get too worried about it. And yes, both drives can be on the same channel and operate at their max interface rate respectively.

 

[Mday]

it's fine. modern controllers can run the drives at independent protocols in the same channel. of course speeds BETWEEN the drives will be that of the slower drive.

 

[DesignDawg]

<< Both drives will run at the slower drives speed!In your case ata66! >>

Wrong.