Which Promise card do I need to recognize 120GB HD on a Celeron 533 system?

[DWF]

I will be installing a WD120gb HD soon on my old Dell. It originally was a PII233 with 440LX motherboard, but a few years back, I upgraded it to a Celeron 533 using the same motherboard. Currently I have the following two hard drives on this system with no controller cards installed:

1.) WD 13GB 7200rpm (ata66)
2.) Maxtor 4GB 5400rpm (ata33)

If I don't use a Promise controller card, the motherboard BIOS will not recognize the new 120gb hard drive. But which controller card should I use for this old system? Should I go for the Promise ATA100 card because the WD120gb drive is ATA100? Or would a simple ata66 card suffice? I don't need the ATA133 card since this drive is under 137gb in size.

What do you all think? Thanks for the help.

 

[bacillus]

the promise ultra ata100 card will work with that hdd.

 

[EeyoreX]

I don't need the ATA133 card since this drive is under 137gb in size.

You NEVER need an ATA133 card, as this is mostly a marketing hype extension of the ATA spec. I have two 200GB WD SE hard drives connected to the Promise Ultra 100 TX2 that was included with the Retail Edition of the drive. It is a misconception that ATA133 is required. The only drives that claim ATA133 speeds are Maxtors, and this, as I said is marketing hype. Hard drives currently can barely stress the ATA66 spec, and the only hardware requirement for drives over 137GB is controller (be they on the motherboard or a PCI card) support for 48-bit addressing. ATA100 supports 48-bit addressing, as do controllers supporting ATA133.

Having said all that, and ATA100 card (like the one linked above, that is often included with retail Western Digital drives) will work just fine.

\Dan

 

[DWF]

Thanks for the replies, guys. EeyoreX, many thanks for the clarification on the ATA133 spec. However, since I have an older system (uses 440LX motherboard; 33MHz bus), what if I decide to get the cheaper ATA66 card instead? After all, I don't think I'll see much of a performance gain with the ATA100 over the ATA66 due to the slow bus. Am I right on this? If so, I'd prefer to get the cheaper ATA66 as long as it can fully recognize the 120GB drive.

 

[jaeger66]

Originally posted by: DWF
Thanks for the replies, guys. EeyoreX, many thanks for the clarification on the ATA133 spec. However, since I have an older system (uses 440LX motherboard; 33MHz bus), what if I decide to get the cheaper ATA66 card instead? After all, I don't think I'll see much of a performance gain with the ATA100 over the ATA66 due to the slow bus. Am I right on this? If so, I'd prefer to get the cheaper ATA66 as long as it can fully recognize the 120GB drive.

The PCI bus on your board isn't any slower than the ones on brand new boards, that isn't the issue. The point is that not even the newest ATA hard drives can transfer data faster than 66MB/s, so the ATA66 card is just fine.

 

[DWF]

jaeger66 ,thanks for your clarification as well That's good news for me then. ATA66 cards are cheap on ebay, being around $10... But after doing some thinking last night, I just may opt for the ata100 card since I may just get a new system in the summer.

thanks again.

DWF

 

[Auric]

I posted in a similar thread recently that one of the advantages of a Silicon Image based controller is that they will drive any ATA device including CD drives, whereas the Promise and HighPoint are only for HDD's. Something to consider.