Quickie: ATA100 HD compatibility.

Anavrin

Member
Mar 17, 2001
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I have an old motherboard (430VX?) with P200 MMX and 32 megs of EDO RAM.

I just bought an IBM deskstar 30 Gb ATA100 7200 RPM (for my upcoming computer).

If I put it in my P200, will it work? Obviously it won't transfer at ATA100, but as long as it reads it properly...
 

LXi

Diamond Member
Apr 18, 2000
7,987
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VX supports IDE ATA standard definitely, not sure if it does DMA33, but it will work for sure.
 

AndyHui

Administrator Emeritus<br>Elite Member<br>AT FAQ M
Oct 9, 1999
13,141
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It will work. The PIIX3 south bridge of the 430VX chipset only supports F-ATA16, so maximum transfer rates are 16MB/s.

The issue that you should be worried about is the size of the hard drive. Most BIOSes from around the time of the VX chipset will only support up to about 8GB or so; you will need BIOS overlay program in order to address the full 30GB, unless your motherboard has had a BIOS update over the last 12 months. The overlay program should be provided with your drive, or available at your drive manufacturer's website.