Lets talk ATA33/66/100/133

[HAL9000]

I'm either going to clear up some confusion or create some more, so lets see how this goes.

Ultra66 cables, Ultra100, and Ultra133 cables are the same thing. They can be identified by having 80 wires instead of the standard 40.

The blue connector goes to the motherboard, the middle grey connector is for a slave drive, and the end black connector is for a master drive.

When running two drives on an Ultra66/100/133 cable, the drives should normally be set to cable select. There has been some instances of "weirdness" with drives that do not like to work with each other in cable select mode as Xayd has discovered in this thread. In this situation, you will either be forced to jumper the drives as master and slave and it is suggested that you still use the middle connection for a slave (grey) and the end connection for a master (black), or rearrange your drive setup to eliminate the conflict.

You can put an Ultra66/100/133 drive on a motherboard that does not support these higher burst rates. You will just be limited to the fastest throughput that the motherboard supports.

You can put an older non Ultra66/100/133 drive on a motherboard or controller card that supports Ultra66/100/133. In this case, you will again be limited only by the maximum throughput of the hard drive itself.

If you mix drives, say an ATA33 with an Ultra100, on the same channel, you may limit your performance to the slower drive.

Before I forget ATA, UDMA, Ultra, are all the same thing for IDE drives.

For more of a breakdown of what really makes Ultra66/100/133 cables different from standard IDE cables, check out this thread where I got really bored at work, dismantled an Ultra cable, and mapped out what goes where.

Finally, Ultra66/100/133 cables are limited to 18 inches in lenght, so if you need longer than that for your drive installation, you will have to rearrange your setup.

OK, hopefully I didn't miss anything, if so, feel free to add your comment and I will paste it into here so it's all in one spot for future reference.

[reboot]

In some cases, depending on drives and controllers, you do not need to use CS to take advantage of the ATA speeds. In some cases you must use CS. I have found no rhyme nor reason to it either. My IBM's on an Asus ATA100 controller work fine using CS, add a Maxtor 30 (ata100) into the equation, and I must use master/slave. Take the IBM's out, and I can use the Maxtor on CS, and add a WD to it, no prob. Go figure...so for now the IBM's are on the Asus controller, and the Maxtor and WD come and go on the mobo controller.

[Nuclear Krusader]

And how do I find out if my HD is using ATA 66 or ATA 100?

[LittleAura]

Nuclear Krusader, it should say on the hd itself (on top).

[Nuclear Krusader]

You mean it can be configured by jumpers rather than being recongnized automatically by the BIOS?

I know that my HD is ATA 100 capable, I'm using the 80 wire cable, my mobo is ATA 100 capable, but how do I know it's using ATA 100 or ATA 60?

Some PCs tell you in the screen that appears briefly between the POST screen and the WIN9x screen, but mine doesn't. So how do I know?

[HAL9000]

If your hard drive is ATA100, and your board is capable with the proper drivers installed, and you have the 80 wire cable installed, it's running at 100.

[justbarron]

Hey HAL,

I have a set of 24" ata100 round cables from Frozen cpu. Not to doubt the statement of the 18" limit, but am I missing something?

justbarron

[justbarron]

Just to add, take a look and see. Is this bogus?

http://www.frozencpu.com/cgi-bin/qui...ge=search.html

I just notices that they even offer a 36" version.

justbarron

[HAL9000]

Optimum max lenght for ATA66/100/133 is 18", 24" will work, but you may lose some performance. SCSI cables on the other hand can get quite long, not sure of the max length off hand.

[justbarron]

Just curious...Thanks

justbarron

[kraken]

The "round" cables are the newer type designed for maximum flow of air for cooling effect. They are the same as ribbon cables. The longer the cable beyond the rated maximum the slower the speed available. I.e. ATA 100 with a 24" cable may only produce ATA 66 speeds (66 MB/s burst).

For maximum performance always use the shortest cables that you can for all things.

[BFD Deadeye]

The blue connector goes to the motherboard, the middle grey connector is for a slave drive, and the end black connector is for a master drive.

Why is this true, Hal? Don't most people have their CD (slave) drives at the top of the case, and their HD (master) closest to the MB? Seems backwards to me. I have 2 CD's and 2 HD's, they are in a pretty tall case, I went with "18 ide cables, and the only way I could get things to reach, was to put blue end on MB, grey on HD (master) and black on my CD (slave). Both my channels are set up this way. Am I losing major speed by having it switched around? Can I set my CD's to Master and my HD's to slave? Whats the better configuration? Thanks.

[HAL9000]

With the Ultra cables wired the way they are, proper operation dictates that the master must be on the end of the ultra cable. If you have a data drive and a CD-Rom, you could have the CD-Rom as a master. If the HD is your boot drive, it may/may not boot (I have seen some boards that will boot from the hard drive in any one of the 4 possible IDE locations). You can set master/slave jumpers, but it's more simplified to use cable select.

[Nuclear Krusader]

But he's not losing any speed by doing so, is he?

[HAL9000]

I have tried setting it up that way and HD tach does show a drop in speed. It still does better than ATA33, but not as good as it could be doing.

[kraken]

Cable Select

Was something that was introduced years ago for simpletons to constuct computers.

Maybe it has some use now.

If the master device "is" intended for the end of a udma66+ cable then that is the way to set them.

If you want your CD rom at the top and the DVD below try changing it around. Do not twist the cable as straight line is best.

[Colonel Sanders]

My problem: I have an ATA 33 and an ATA 100 cable. I have my DVD-Rom on top, my CD-RW below, and then a little ways down is my ATA 100 HDD. At first I had to wire the CD-RW and HDD togother, which slows things down to ATA33 even with the ATA100 cable?

Logan

[HAL9000]

Is that the way you have it now, or do you have the DVD and CDRW together now and the HD alone, if not, why not change it to that way.

[Jenni]

I have a WD 100GB ATA100 HDD on an Abit ST6 ATA100 MB. Using the stock w2k IDE drivers, my HDD gets a 17356 in the HDD benchmark on Sandra. To put this in perspective, my 15GB IBM ATA66 got about the same numbers, 17xxx, on an ATA33 Aopen MB, with a 80 wire cable. I've tried updating the ATA drivers (Intel 815EP chipset), but every time I do, the hardware manager shows the HDD transfer mode as "PIO mode only" and I can't change it. The only soultion is to remove the IDE controller from the device manager and reboot, and let 2k install its stock drivers.

How accurate are those synthetic benchmarks? I mean, are the 6000-7000 points more I should be getting really all that important? Am I ever gonna "feel" that difference?

[bosco]

WD 20.GB 200BB EIDE ULTRA-ATA/66-100 9.5MS 7200RPM 2MB BUFFER

So, this drive is 66 & 100 capable? Why not just list it as 100?

[HAL9000]

Their attempt to curb confusion. They're trying to let you know it's backwards compatable.

[Steegs]

back to the lengths...

i have a full tower and the cable connecting my dvd and cdrw drive to my mobo is stretched to the limit. these devices are ata66 if im not mistaken. so would they feel any drop in preformance if i went with a 24'' cable? i wouldnt think so since they transmit slower than the ata100, which would allow for time needed for the signal to travel 6 more inches. id figure id check before i went and bought a 24'' cable.

-steegs

[HAL9000]

As far as I know, the recommended maximum is 18 inches, although I have seen 24" cables available. I'm getting some in my shop next week and will be experimenting with them to see if there is any difference.

[Katrenavantassle]

I heard the rounded cables were better than the ribbons. I recently had to replace the power supply in my computer, which I did myself, much to the surprize of my husband. I was wondering, if I put in a larger power supply, like replaced a 250 watt with a 400 watt, would it burn up my cpu? ( I only have a 400 mhz cpu.)
The reason I ask this, is the 250 watt was fine for two and 1/2 years.....but it burned out due to the fact that I leave my pc on all the time. I recently made extra air vents on the case to keep the new one with alot of ventilation... simply by punching out some of the extra cards slots on the back. I did replace the old power supply with the same 250 watt. But was wondering if I did right.
Thanks.

[HAL9000]

1) No, I wouldn't say that rounded cables are better performance wise, but possibly in neatness only. I was able to get a little more "stretch" to the top of my tower with a 24" rounded cable than I was with a 24" ribbon cable.

2) No, a 400w power supply isn't gonna burn up your CPU. The system will only use what it needs. Personally, I believe 400w would be overkill even in a loaded up new machine.

3) No, I don't think your old power supply burned out from leaving it on all the time. I run my systems 24 hours a day and have yet to have one fail. I have servers out in businesses that have run 24 hours a day and some of them are 5 years or more old and still going on the original hardware.

[Marvin]

Hello, I'm new at this and may be doing this wrong. Would you be kind enought to tell me how to post. I'm having a problem with my computer,when I log on to the internet I have to click on my restote button,at the top right corner ,to get a full screen. It use to do this .HELP if you can or will.Thank You Marvin

[piasabird]

Does it hurt a hard drive to mount it sideways parallell to a harddrive? Or would that work better in a desktop case?

[HAL9000]

You can mount a hard drive in any position, but, there has been incidences where a hard drive that was mounted say inverted from day one, then mounted upright later, where it didn't perform well. Mounting it upside down again brought the performance back. Why a drive would behave in such a manner.... who knows

[TimPoet]

Why would my ATA 100 drive be detected ATA 86 with no UDMA 100 controller card or whatever it's called installed?
The mobo only goes to ATA 66.

[piasabird]

Every motherboard is a little different. Sometimes you need a special driver or a patch to get the operating system to recognize the ATA 100 Drives. On my ASUS PIII/Celeron TUSL2-C motherboard, I had to manually set up the ATA-100 Driver. A CD came with the board to make Windows recognize some of the additional hardware devices on the motherboard.