what's the differance between ATA 33/66/100/133?

[l77Il7H]

guys, what's the differance between paraell ATA 33/66/100/133? and how do you know which HDD uses which paraell ATA?

[Endoscient]

all do thats how many mega bits (maybe bytes) per second they transfer. all or parrallel ata. Serial ATA is 150

[Hawkeye]

Well, the difference is quite literally the speed at which the hard drive can read or write data, i.e. the theoretical maximum transfer speed in MB per second. Most parallel ATA hard drives made in the last couple of years are either going to be ATA100 or ATA133. Older drives may use ATA66, or really old drives (those in the sizes under 5 GB) may even be ATA33. For ATA100 and ATA133 drives, you have to make sure they are connected to the motherboard using an 80-wire IDE cable. For older hard drives (ATA33 and ATA66), Zip drives, and optical disc drives (CD and DVD drives), you can use the older 40-wire IDE cable.

To find out which speed the hard drive uses, look at the hard drive itself. It is often labled right on the drive. If not, note the model number on the drive, go to the drive manufacturer's website, and enter it there to find out the specs of the drive.

[AnalogRival]

It's the maximum it can transfer, but you'll never see it sustained. I have a harddrive running ATA 100, and I've seen my max random burst speed hit 80 MB/s, but you'll get around 40-50 MB/s sustained from what I've seen.

As for Hawkeye, ATA66 also requires the 80 wire cable. :)

And for part two, parallel ATA uses a wide cable connector, where-as serial is very small.

[l77Il7H]

most of maxtor hdd are ata133, while wd hdd are only ata100. does that mean maxtor drive are faster? the gb is and price is about the same. another question, are all ata 100/133 known as ata ULTRA 100/133?

[AnalogRival]

most of maxtor hdd are ata133, while wd hdd are only ata100. does that mean maxtor drive are faster? the gb is and price is about the same. another question, are all ata 100/133 known as ata ULTRA 100/133?

Not really, like I said, you'll never see 100, so don't bother, plus the motherboard/IDE controller must support 133, things to pay attention to are seek time, RPMs, and cache size.

And yes, ata,ultra ata/DMA mode, is the same.

[Visentinel]

Zip drives, and optical disk drives (CD and DVD drives), you can use the older 40-wire IDE cable.

You may find that using an 80 pin cable on your Optical Drives will allow them to run at UDMA Mode 2 not just Multi-word DMA :p !

the speed indicated by the 100/133 is MegaBytes Per Second

Really 66 is still Pretty much Enough since if only 1 hard disk is on the cable it will never keep a sustained 50 megs/sec transfer speed. they arent fast enough yet.

but 100 is better if you have 2 HD's on the cable.

133 is useless and only 1 HD manufacturer is using it :rofl:

[Hawkeye]

Zip drives, and optical disk drives (CD and DVD drives), you can use the older 40-wire IDE cable.

You may find that using an 80 pin cable on your Optical Drives will allow them to run at UDMA Mode 2 not just Multi-word DMA :p !

the speed indicated by the 100/133 is MegaBytes Per Second

Really 66 is still Pretty much Enough since if only 1 hard disk is on the cable it will never keep a sustained 50 megs/sec transfer speed. they arent fast enough yet.

but 100 is better if you have 2 HD's on the cable.

133 is useless and only 1 HD manufacturer is using it :rofl:

Actually, both Maxtor and IBM (now Hitachi) use hard drives that support ATA133. My friend just got a new PC with two IBM 180 GB hard drives, and they use ATA 133. ;)

[sunbiz_3000]

And what about CD-Writers. I have a SONY which is ATA33. What good is that then ??? and how does it then work at 48x ????

[enigma-penguin Veteran]

ug whats wrong with me... mass edits tonight

cos its like 4kb per second

[AnalogRival]

And what about CD-Writers. I have a SONY which is ATA33. What good is that then ??? and how does it then work at 48x ????

you'll never see a Cd-drive faster than ATA33, cause 1x for CDs is 150 KBps. Now the fastest CD-ROM/RW's are at 52x, which is 7,800 KBps, nowhere near 33 MBps

[Gary_Player]

Any drive that ISNT a harddrive uses ATAPI (advanced transfer something packet interface or something like that) but the spec only supports up to 20mbps or something around that...

It is true, however, that if you put your dvd drives or cd writers on a 40pin ide ribbon instead of an 80pin one they wont be able to get up past DMA2

ATA66 and above is also called "ultra-ATA" l77Il7H

ATA133 is only supported by Maxtor (i remember some other manufacturer tried a while ago but they had too many problems) and probably will only be supported by maxtor because serial ATA has everyone's attentnion now...rightly so, everything else is serialized now, i dunno why they waited so long...

SATA currently runs at ata150 but the groundwork is laid down for sata300, 450, and 900 i heard somewhere...which i think is obscene and we wont be seeing (or using) until we're all running 128bit processors and tarrabyte drives but hey ;) it sure would impress your friends though ;)

[Zip]

all do thats how many mega bits (maybe bytes) per second they transfer. all or parrallel ata. Serial ATA is 150

byte and bit are not the same thing

[l77Il7H]

i hate the man who invented bites and bytes!

[Almighty1]

From what I recall, ATA100 is the ATA6.0 standard but ATA133 is not a official ATA standard.

[~clean]

From what I recall, ATA100 is the ATA6.0 standard but ATA133 is not a official ATA standard.

Yeah from what i remember its a IBM marketing Hype ! .. dang fangled 133 !

[AnalogRival]

From what I recall, ATA100 is the ATA6.0 standard but ATA133 is not a official ATA standard.

n/m my post, the idiots who made this ata standard can't settle on different names for different speeds. >_<

Edited July 7, 2003 by AnalogRival

[Tobbe]

i hate the man who invented bites and bytes!

What if it was a woman? :huh:

hehe, what's wrong with bits and bytes? It all makes sense. :happy:

[Steven]

What if it was a woman? :huh:

hehe, what's wrong with bits and bytes? It all makes sense. :happy:

a bit is 1, and 1 byte is 8 bits.

[Almighty1]

Yeah from what i remember its a IBM marketing Hype ! .. dang fangled 133 !

I think it was Maxtor that had the ATA133 first... IBM/Hitachi only recently introduced it. But I guess this goes back to the IDE marketing again. There is EIDE (Western Digital/Maxor) and there there is FastATA (Seagate/Quantum).