laptop harddrive and ATA6

  • Thread starter Thread starter paul814
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paul814

Hello all,

I have a laptop harddrive that went bad and on the harddrive it says
ATA/IDE. When looking up the laptop online (HP Pavilion ze5170) it
says it accepts ATA 2/3/4/5

I see an ATA6 that I want to buy. Will it work in the machine? What
do you think? And whats the differance?

Since the drive that is in there now says ATA/IDE can I get just an ATA
and will it be ok?

Hope someone can help, thanks
 
All IDE drives are backward compatible. Get whatever
is available ATA6 will work just fine.
 
Hello all,

I have a laptop harddrive that went bad and on the harddrive it says
ATA/IDE. When looking up the laptop online (HP Pavilion ze5170) it
says it accepts ATA 2/3/4/5

I see an ATA6 that I want to buy. Will it work in the machine? What
do you think? And whats the differance?
Click to expand...

ATA2/3/4/5 means the laptop supports up to ATA100 mode.
ATA6 is ATA133. The drive should work, should fall back to
ATA100 mode. In "some" cases in the past it might've been
necessary to use a HDD manufacturer's utility to force the
drive into the lower ATA mode, but AFAIK these kinds of
issues have been resolved and are not usually needed today.

On paper ATA6 is faster, but in practice (and particularly
with slower, laptop drives) the performance difference will
not be noticable in use. The most significant performance
difference in use will be from higher RPM, and then larger
cache size. Preferribly you would choose at least 5400 RPM
and 8MB cache if performance is worth an extra dozen $ or
so, give or take a few $ depending on the model.
Since the drive that is in there now says ATA/IDE can I get just an ATA
and will it be ok?
Click to expand...


Yes it will be a try-it-and-see situation, with the
expectation that it will work fine with no further action
necessary.
 
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