Are ATA and IDE interchangeable terms?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Doc
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D

Doc

I'm looking into getting a faster, bigger hard drive. The drives on
the shelf at the local computer stores all list ATA/100 or ATA/133. I
see articles on the net on IDE/ATA vs SCSI. So, is ATA the same as
IDE? If not, what's the relationship?

I'm running an IBM 300PL 550mhz PIII, Win98 first edition. Would one
of these ATA drives work? What does the 133/100 refer to?

All input appreciated.
 
I'm looking into getting a faster, bigger hard drive.
The drives on the shelf at the local computer stores
all list ATA/100 or ATA/133. I see articles on the net
on IDE/ATA vs SCSI. So, is ATA the same as IDE?
Yes.

If not, what's the relationship?
Click to expand...

ATA is the more correct name, more modern usage.
I'm running an IBM 300PL 550mhz PIII, Win98
first edition. Would one of these ATA drives work?
Yep.

What does the 133/100 refer to?
Click to expand...

The speed the interface runs at. Normally not important because
the ATA/100 drives dont saturate the interface anyway.
All input appreciated.
Click to expand...

Even nasty remarks ?
 
Rod Speed said:
Even nasty remarks ?
Click to expand...

All USEFUL input... ;-)

Now, let me ask, I notice some drives specify OS they are designed to
work with, and some indicate Win98 SE on the list, does that mean they
flat won't work with First Edition?
 
Howdy!

Now, let me ask, I notice some drives specify OS they are designed to
work with, and some indicate Win98 SE on the list, does that mean they
flat won't work with First Edition?
Click to expand...

The DRIVES work perfectly with first edition.

HOWEVER - If they're over 64G, the FDISK that comes with Win98
(First and early builds of Second) won't properly report disk space, saying,
for instance, that an 80G drive has about 10G on it. Still works - it
appears to be a display-only thing.

The SOFTWARE that installs the drive, if necessary, might not
support Win98 Gold. But the drive itself is different.

THAT said - if your BIOS supports the drive natively, OR you use an
ATA-100 / ATA-133 host adapter to connect the drive, you should be good to
go up to 128G.

RwP
 
Doc said:
I'm looking into getting a faster, bigger hard drive. The drives on
the shelf at the local computer stores all list ATA/100 or ATA/133.
I see articles on the net on IDE/ATA vs SCSI. So, is ATA the same
as IDE? If not, what's the relationship?

I'm running an IBM 300PL 550mhz PIII, Win98 first edition. Would one
of these ATA drives work? What does the 133/100 refer to?

All input appreciated.
Click to expand...

IDE (Integrated Drive Electronics--or numerous other interpretations)
and ATA (AT Attachment) are one and the same thing.

ATA is the name used by the ATA specification commitee, T13. IDE
(or EIDE) is the name used by the trade. Same goes for ATA/33/66
/100/133, UDMA .../133, Ultra .../133 etc. They again are trade names.
The proper ATA names for those are Ultra DMA mode 2,4,5 and 6.
The trade associations usually prefer the simpler and catchy names.
 
Now, let me ask, I notice some drives specify OS they are
designed to work with, and some indicate Win98 SE on the
list, does that mean they flat won't work with First Edition?
Click to expand...

Which drives specifically ? Presumably thats drives over
137GB or external USB2 or firewire drives or something.

There likely is a problem with drives over 137GB with Win98FE
 
The DRIVES work perfectly with first edition.

HOWEVER - If they're over 64G, the FDISK that comes with Win98
(First and early builds of Second) won't properly report disk space,
saying, for instance, that an 80G drive has about 10G on it. Still
works - it appears to be a display-only thing.
Click to expand...

I think you can still download the MS update to bring Win98 up to 98se.
The fdisk update is separate and needs to be downloaded for 98se also.

I just went through all of this installing a WD 160GB drive (I didn't use
the included drivers because my bios supports 48 bit LBA). The Win98se
system can handle a drive up to 2 TB. However the software - scandisk,
defrag - are only good for partitions up to 137 GB (128) because the fat32
map space in those programs is 16 bit. So you are limited to fat32's of
64MB/(4 bytes/cluster number) = 16M clusters, less 64K,=16320K clusters.

The updated fdisk still doesn't report anything over 64G correctly. Since
I learnt I was limited to 137GB partitons and I couldn't fine tune with
fdisk, I divided my disk up using Ranish:

C: 8 GB (or rather, to old style cyl 1023, for the hell of it.)
D: 16 GB (maxed using a 8K cluster)
E:134 GB (the remainder, or 125GB, 1.024^3 base)

Ranish insisted on using 64KB cluster sizes for the large partition. This
gave scandisk fits with 'out of memory' errors, even though I have plenty
of memory. I went back to MS format and it formatted using 32KB clusters
and scandisk worked great!

Note that my drive E: overlaps the 137GB 28 bit LBA boundary and works
without wrap-around or other addressing problems. One should be able to
keep adding partitions up to 2 TB for larger drives, like the MS docs say.
 
Howdy!

SpaceButler said:
I think you can still download the MS update to bring Win98 up to 98se.
Click to expand...

Nope, never was available as a "legal" download. It was a $25 CD,
though ($20 for the CD, $5 for shipping and handling).
The fdisk update is separate and needs to be downloaded for 98se also.
Click to expand...

Well, the later builds have the fixed FDISK also. Or the last ones
....

RwP
 
Nope, never was available as a "legal" download. It was a $25
CD,
though ($20 for the CD, $5 for shipping and handling).
Click to expand...

Maybe so. I went and looked through all my stuff and couldn't find it. I
tend to download things like that. It's possible it was offered on Windows
Update for a month during one of the transitions. Or more likely, it was
in one of the MSDN libraries or Y2K cd's. Anyway, thanks for the info.
 
Howdy!

SpaceButler said:
Maybe so. I went and looked through all my stuff and couldn't find it. I
tend to download things like that. It's possible it was offered on Windows
Update for a month during one of the transitions. Or more likely, it was
in one of the MSDN libraries or Y2K cd's. Anyway, thanks for the info.
Click to expand...

Well, it WAS included in TechNet. Most TN subscribers knew about
that, though ... for non-subscribers (such as me!), it was a purchased item,
though.

RwP
 
Hey, make certain you upgrade your bios before attempting this; I've an IBM
300PL (6862-27U) that will only accept up to an 8GB drive.


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