Question: ATA-100 IDE RAID - can you use ATA-133 drives

[MISMan]

Greetings,

I just purchased 3 drives that are ATA-133, and am getting ready to buy the nicer ATA-100 RAID card (either Adaptec or Iwill). On all their specs, they just say requirements on the drive are ATA drives, not ATA 100. None say that they will NOT work with 133, so amd I safe to assume it will work just that I will get the 100 speed versus the 133 the drives are capable of?

I have researched and no one has the answer so I figured my fellow geeks at Anand would

 

[Tripleshot]

You may be in the wrong forum for an answer. Why not check out the best makers like Promise or Highpoint?

 

[XMan]

I feel I can answer this as I have two ATA-100 drives on a 133 RAID controller. The transfer rate is limited by the transfer rate of your drives.

 

[zephyrprime]

If the drives are less than 137 gb, then there's a 100% chance they'll work. If the drives are larger, they will only work if your raid controller supports 48bit LBA.

 

[MISMan]

Kewl, thanks!!

 

[rgwalt]

The drives should "dumb down" to the speed of your RAID card.

Let me ask... Why three drives? Why not go with 4 drives in two striped sets, or a striped set with a mirror backup. Striping can really speed up your system. Personally, I love my RAID 0 array. Wouldn't trade it for the world. I've thought about upgrading, but I'm going to wait until either I build a new system, one of my disks goes, or they come out with 10,000 RPM IDE drives, which ever is first.

Ryan

 

[SnapIT]

Originally posted by: MISMan
Greetings,

I just purchased 3 drives that are ATA-133, and am getting ready to buy the nicer ATA-100 RAID card (either Adaptec or Iwill). On all their specs, they just say requirements on the drive are ATA drives, not ATA 100. None say that they will NOT work with 133, so amd I safe to assume it will work just that I will get the 100 speed versus the 133 the drives are capable of?

I have researched and no one has the answer so I figured my fellow geeks at Anand would

Get the adaptec...

 

[TNTrulez]

yes