UDMA100 and ATA100? Whats the difference?

[davidkay]

sorry i know I am really thick! but what is the difference between ATA100 and UDMA100. Are they the same thing and just got two different names?

Thanks

 

[Cretin]

I think the proper way to say it is ATA100, but they both mean the same thing. Think of them as synonyms.

Hope I helped!

Cretin

 

[Lord Evermore]

ATA100 is the way it's being referred to for the most part. UDMA mode 6 is probably the technical name for it.

I remember when the name 'ATA' was something only Seagate used to try and make their drives look unique from other companies that just used EIDE as the description.

 

[Radboy]

I think it's mode [5] .. at least that's what the DMA setting is in my CUSL2.

Same, same.

 

[Noriaki]

DMA is a bad term becuase it just means direct memory access, SCSI uses that to, hell your video card and PCI devices all use it...ATA means AT Attachment (AT is a PC standard put forward by IBM years ago), and thus ATA100 would be the proper name, it's also reffered to as ATA DMA mode 5 (IDE is itself a misnomer, as SCSI drives also have IDE circuits). But anyways, we could bicker all day about which is the technically "proper" name for it, but I'm sure you don't care 🙂

In common usage they mean the same thing.

 

[CalebTG]

Yes, ATA100 is correct
UDMA mode 5 (6 doesn't exist yet)

ATA is the overall bandwidth of the controller
UDMA was just added to the name when Ultra DMA was introduced to limit CPU usage.

 

[Lord Evermore]

I assumed they'd skipped over 5, just as modes 1 and 3 were skipped over (ATA33 is mode 2, ATA66 is mode 4). I figured mode 5 would have been something like 75MBps which they never bothered to release as a product.

 

[Radboy]

In my mobo bios (CUSL2), I have options to set HDD DMA mode at DMA 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 & Disabled.