"Mistaya" said:
This may seem a daft question, but I am unsure of connection terminology.
My current hard drive is running very slowly and I want to replace it. The
one I am considering is the Maxtor Diamondmax Plus 9, 120Gb. This comes with
an ATA133 connector and I want to know if the motherboard will accept it
without problems.
Thanks for your help.
Nick
Fun with dictionaries:
ATA = A standard called "AT Attachment", and the AT part (as in IBM AT
computer) stands for Advanced Technology. ATAPI is the other
part of the standard, and the PI stands for packet interface.
ATA defines the parallel cable used and the protocols.
IDE = Intelligent Drive Electronics or Integrated Drive Electronics
(
http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/I/IDE_interface.html)
I guess that makes it an "IDE drive" and an "ATA cable".
Informally, people now refer to the parallel 40 or 80 wire cable
as "PATA", and the new skinny serial cable as "SATA". It sounds
like your Diamondmax has a PATA interface.
The A7V333 has four PATA connectors, and can have a total of
eight disk drives connected. Two connectors are fed by the
Southbridge, and those connectors can have hard drives or
CD/DVD drives connected. The manual says the other two connectors,
which are controlled by the Promise controller, are intended
for hard drives only (no ATAPI support for CD/DVD).
So, there are plenty of places to plug in the new drive.
Use a 80 wire, 40 pin connectorized cable. This cable differs
from the 40 wire, 40 pin connector cable, in that an additional
40 wires are used to carry ground signals, which helps the other
wires carry the data signals. The 80 wire, 40 pin cable has better
signal quality, and if you expect the drive to run fast, then
that is the kind of cable to use. Some disk drives ship with one
of those cables included (if you buy a retail packaged drive).
OEM drives (bare drive in antistatic plastic package) don't come
with anything, so you may need to dig up some screws, mounting
rails, and a cable, if you don't already have one.
The transfer speed of the drive is backward compatible, and
a device running at 133MB/sec, can also run at 100, 66, 33, and
so on. This makes it possible to put a new drive on an old
computer, and an old drive on a new computer. The BIOS will
pick the fastest speed they both support. Even the cable plays
a part in this, and the BIOS tries to identify whether a
40 or 80 wire cable is being used, as that makes a difference
to the transfer speed selected.
You will find many people worrying and losing sleep, over
whether their drive is connected to the fastest connector
on their motherboard. But, the thing is, there are many things
in the data path which are slower than the ATA cable. The PCI
bus has an average real world speed of 100-110MB/sec. The
fastest IDE disk drive head rate is 70MB/sec or so. Many drives
are slower than that, because their rotation rate is lower than
the fastest drive. As a result, it isn't absolutely essential to
have an ATA133 interface, at least until someone makes a
drive that can sustain that transfer rate.
If shopping for a drive, I really like the storagereview
database. It has charts of drive transfer speed, and drive
noise and temperature rise. You can compare drives and find
the drive that gives the best combination of factors for your
application. Your drive looks pretty good.
http://storagereview.com/comparison.html
HTH,
Paul
