Any problem adding old IDE drive to EIDE controller?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Tony Zackin
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Tony Zackin

Can I just add an old IDE drive (about 7-8 years old) to an EIDE interface
without experiencing any problems? Can I safely read it without causing any
data loss?

Thanks.

Tony Zackin
 
Tony Zackin said:
Can I just add an old IDE drive (about 7-8 years old) to an EIDE interface
without experiencing any problems? Can I safely read it without causing any
data loss?
Click to expand...

It may be slow...but it should work ok
 
Yes you safely can, BUT why would you want to? It'll be several times
slower than a modern harddrive.
 
Can I just add an old IDE drive (about 7-8 years old) to an EIDE interface
without experiencing any problems? Can I safely read it without causing any
data loss?
Click to expand...

Outside of the size and speed of it, it will work fine. I installed win 98
on the same type of setup a while back. Crashed the origional hard drive
for some reason and all I had to check the system with was a 420 mb drive.
Worked fine except for the speed.
 
Thanks to all for your response. The reason I want to do it is to be able
to move data from an old machine to a newer one. Once the data are moved
the old drive would be used for archiving.
 
Thanks to all for your response. The reason I want to do it is to be able
to move data from an old machine to a newer one. Once the data are moved
the old drive would be used for archiving.
Click to expand...

Well if that's the reason it might be easier in the long run to simply
put a NIC (network adapter) in whichever PC doesn't have one already,
then you're able to move data to and fro.
 
Tony said:
Thanks to all for your response. The reason I want to do it is to be able
to move data from an old machine to a newer one. Once the data are moved
the old drive would be used for archiving.
Click to expand...


If it's not a UDMA drive, (i.e. it's an old PIO drive) don't slave it to the
fast drive.
 
Yes you safely can, BUT why would you want to? It'll be several times
slower than a modern harddrive.
Click to expand...

One possibility might be to retrieve the data off of it. It might be
slow as a slug, but plugging in the drive and copying directly off it
is certainly faster than transfering it other ways.

There may be other reasons, but it's the only one I can think of off
hand.
 
How would I determine if it is or isn't UDMA and, if it is a PIO drive, what
setting do I use other than slave when connecting to the EIDE system?
Thanks.

Tony
 
How would I determine if it is or isn't UDMA and, if it is a PIO drive, what
setting do I use other than slave when connecting to the EIDE system?
Thanks.
Click to expand...

For connecting it only long enough to copy off the data, don't worry
about it... soon enough you'll have the data copied off and can remove
it again. There is no special setting to use, simply connect and
jumper appropriate to master/slave position on the cable.

If you're wanting to keep it in the system (for whatever reason, it is
NOT fit for archival purposes because it's age makes it a liability,
likely to fail sooner), then go to the manufacturer's website and
download the spec sheet, which will detail the fastest access mode it
supports. "Old" is relative... most drives of 1GB or faster do
support UDMA, and AFAIK, every drive of 2-3GB or faster, support at
least UDMA/ATA33.
 
Can I just add an old IDE drive (about 7-8 years old) to an EIDE interface
without experiencing any problems? Can I safely read it without causing any
data loss?
Click to expand...

Yes. You shouldn't have any problem. Just make sure you have the
jumpers...on EACH of the drives...set properly according to your
hook-up configuration.

If yer booting from a DOS disk, you shouldn't have any problems at
all. If yer booting into Windows, it may not boot all the
way...depending on how you have DMA set up. If you have a problem,
boot into safe mode and turn off DMA for that controller.

Good luck.


Have a nice week...

Trent

Follow Joan Rivers' example --- get pre-embalmed!
 
Stacey said:
Try it and see. Hook a 400MB vintage PIO mode drive up with an ata33>
UDMA drive and post the benchmarks.
Click to expand...

And can you reccomend a small program to use to benchmark? I have a Seagate
ATA100 in my PC at the moment, on it's own on an IDE channel, running ultra
DMA mode 5, and a 212MB drive in the junk drawer.

Lets do this. Gotta be a small proggy, I'm on dial-up with a crap
connection.
 
And can you reccomend a small program to use to benchmark? I have a Seagate
ATA100 in my PC at the moment, on it's own on an IDE channel, running ultra
DMA mode 5, and a 212MB drive in the junk drawer.

Lets do this. Gotta be a small proggy, I'm on dial-up with a crap
connection.
Click to expand...

Atto is about as small as it gets, but doesn't show CPU utilization.
Perhaps that doesn't matter on XP, you still have a built-in monitor.

http://69.36.189.159/usr_1034/26k.zip
 
kony said:
Atto is about as small as it gets, but doesn't show CPU utilization.
Perhaps that doesn't matter on XP, you still have a built-in monitor.

http://69.36.189.159/usr_1034/26k.zip
Click to expand...

Thanks, I'll have a play a bit later and post results. I have MBM5 set to
show CPU utilisation in my tray anyway, although it's always showing 100% as
I run SETI CLI. Might turn it off for this.
 
Try it and see. Hook a 400MB vintage PIO mode drive up with an ata33> UDMA
drive and post the benchmarks.
Click to expand...

If the mb controller has independent timing (a modern mb), the PIO
drive (probably Mode 0 or Mode 1) won't slow down the other drive.
That only happened during the dark ages! lol


Have a nice week...

Trent

Follow Joan Rivers' example --- get pre-embalmed!
 
~misfit~ said:
Thanks, I'll have a play a bit later and post results. I have MBM5
set to show CPU utilisation in my tray anyway, although it's always
showing 100% as I run SETI CLI. Might turn it off for this.
Click to expand...

Ok, this will take a while, I ran some tests and wrote out the results by
hand, I don't know how it will come out format-wise, maybe use fixed text
setting. I fitted a Quantum LPS170A 170MB HDD (couldn't find the 212MB I
mentioned earlier) as a slave to my 80GB Seagate and ran ATTO Disk
Benchmark, at default settings. Transfer size was 0.5Kb through to 1024Kb,
total length (whatever that means) was 4Mb. The old Quantum would run at
Multi-Word DMA mode 1 but I limited it to PIO as that is what we were
discussing. I have heard people say that the IDE bus is limited to the speed
of the slowest drive and have always argued against this where modern mobos
are concerned. Here are the results, I don't know how it will look though.
There are seven columns, the first is transfer size, the second and third
are write and read for my 80GB alone on the channel. the fourth and fifth
are for the same drive with the 170MB as slave and the sixth and seventh are
for the slave drive:

0.5 87 108 75 78 79 58
1.0 175 159 156 147 113 127
2.0 324 327 270 302 211 210
4.0 678 601 830 582 421 512
8.0 1221 1168 1114 913 984 855
16 3076 2318 1815 2308 1657 1677
32 3994 4862 3423 4122 1946 1992
64 7932 9274 9845 8966 1959 1946
128 18459 17306 16543 15570 1959 1992
256 29523 28714 26277 28100 1866 1994
512 41020 39160 40590 36384 1984 2000
1024 41323 42757 38130 44422 1996 1994

So there you have it. It seems that, with a PIO drive as slave, the ATA100
drive is a little slower in general but nowhere near as slow as the slowest
device on the channel. It is my contention that *any* other drive on the IDE
channel will slow it down slightly. Unfortunately I don't have a spare
ATA100 drive to throw in as slave to test it without pulling the missus' PC
apart, something I'm not prepared to do at this stage.

I thought about doing several runs on each and averaging out the results but
this has already taken a chunk of my day. In a few tests, as you can see
above, the ATA100 drive was actually faster with a PIO slave. You can see
above that the PIO dive tops out at below 2MB/sec while the ATA100 gets
close over 40MB/sec in some tests. Even with a PIO slave.

The ATA100 drive is formatted NTFS, the 170MB drive was already formatted
FAT32 so I left it as it was. The motherboard is a Soltek SL-75FRN2-L.
nForce2 Ultra 400 with ATA100 controllers. OS is WinXP Pro.

What say you Stacey?
 
Trent© said:
If the mb controller has independent timing (a modern mb), the PIO
drive (probably Mode 0 or Mode 1) won't slow down the other drive.
That only happened during the dark ages! lol


Have a nice week...
Click to expand...

I agree totally Trent, any motherboard made for Pentium 1 or better will
have independant timing. See my test results to confirm.

I get so sick of idiots who read an out-dated book 12 years ago keep pulling
out the "The channel will only run as fast as the slowest device" bullshit.
Maybe in the days when a 386 was king. I've just spent a couple of hours
proving that wrong. Let's hope we never hear that crap here again. It's
cruel and unusual punishment to give completely wrong information to newbies
who are trying to find answers.

Cheers,
 
I agree totally Trent, any motherboard made for Pentium 1 or better will
have independant timing. See my test results to confirm.
Click to expand...

Remember...you said that...I didn't. And I see a lot of
inconsistencies in your testing.

I get so sick of idiots who read an out-dated book 12 years ago keep pulling
out the "The channel will only run as fast as the slowest device" bullshit.
Maybe in the days when a 386 was king. I've just spent a couple of hours
proving that wrong. Let's hope we never hear that crap here again. It's
cruel and unusual punishment to give completely wrong information to newbies
who are trying to find answers.

Cheers,
Click to expand...

People give opinionated advice here all the time. Most folks that
give advice have not really TRIED that advice. They've read it
somewhere...and simply passed it on. Some of it is correct...some
isn't.

I refrain from calling anyone an 'idiot'...although I did actually do
that...to a spammer who was bad-mouthing Office Max. For example, I
don't consider you an idiot...but there's a LOT of holes in the
testing procedure you outlined (cluster sizes, cache, etc.) Someone
will now pick up those results as gospel...and simply pass them on.

I believe in being cordial to most folks. Life is too short to be
rude...usually! lol


Have a nice week...

Trent

Follow Joan Rivers' example --- get pre-embalmed!
 
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