gamehead200 Posted October 25, 2002 Share Posted October 25, 2002 I've decided to install a knew HD into my old computer. Probably one of those Maxtor 80GB ATA/133. The problem is that I don't know if my computer is ATA/133 compatible. Is there a way to find this out? My computer was bought in '98. Right now, I have another 20GB Maxtor, but I don't know if its ATA/133. I got it last year. Any ideas of how I can figure this out? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tinker Posted October 26, 2002 Share Posted October 26, 2002 Look for your Mother board specs on the manufactures site. Find out what BIOS version you have and look at the specs for it. This will tell you what IDE ATA your system will support... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Drewdatrip Posted October 26, 2002 Share Posted October 26, 2002 If the system what bought in 98, theres no way that its going to run that Hd at 133, but 133 is backwards compatable with udma 66 which was the standard at the time...so the Hd will just revert back to those burst speeds...-Drew Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zipp51 Posted October 26, 2002 Share Posted October 26, 2002 You can run that ATA133 at the speed it was made for but you have to buy a controller card.I have installed them and set them up on older mobo's and it is like putting in any card.You will probably have to disable the Primary IDE setting in bios to run it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gamehead200 Posted October 26, 2002 Author Share Posted October 26, 2002 If the system what bought in 98, theres no way that its going to run that Hd at 133, but 133 is backwards compatable with udma 66 which was the standard at the time...so the Hd will just revert back to those burst speeds...So Drew, your saying that it'll work just the way it is. Plug it in, and that's it? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
XPerties Posted October 26, 2002 Share Posted October 26, 2002 If the system what bought in 98, theres no way that its going to run that Hd at 133, but 133 is backwards compatable with udma 66 which was the standard at the time...so the Hd will just revert back to those burst speeds...So Drew, your saying that it'll work just the way it is. Plug it in, and that's it?yep Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Drewdatrip Posted October 26, 2002 Share Posted October 26, 2002 Yea gamehead, it will just defalt to your Mobos max peak burst speed. If you want to take advantage to the ATA133, then get yourself a Ata133 card, like zipp said, and you will get the max burst rate of the Hd.....but it will work regardless.. =Drew Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tinker Posted October 26, 2002 Share Posted October 26, 2002 This is interesting because I have 4 Maxtor ATA133 HDDs and if I put them in an ATA100 system the 133 drive is not seen. System reports no hard drives found. I have to run them through a 133 card.....I thought it would work like you all are saying but I found it not to be true. I wonder if some HDDs will no work backward? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zivan56 Posted October 27, 2002 Share Posted October 27, 2002 Thats strange, I have a Maxtor ATA 133 HD running at ATA100 with no problems. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MSNwar Posted October 27, 2002 Share Posted October 27, 2002 Tinker, do you mean that the BIOS or Windows does not detect the HDs?First step in detecting the hard drive(s) is through the BIOS 'automatic' HD settings( of course you know that). Manual settings cab be unreliable on 'some older mobos, but I know you have the new Intel mobo, so that is not a concern. What is a concern is maybe the mobo is defective! Easy way to be sure is to watch the cold boot settings. If the result is "Not Found" (depends on your BIOS manufacturer for the terminology) then I would suspect a faulty BIOS or faulty onboard IDE controller. Maybe setting the BIOS to default settings and tweaking it afterwards will find a solution. Wish I was there to experiment with it. It is possible to Flash the BIOS and sometimes a faulty Flash will setup just fine, but actually have faults. A new Flash may be in order?Now if the four HDs are the only devices on the two IDE channels then they all should be deteced by the BIOS. Do you have any other devices sharing the two channels? What about the CD-ROM drive, etc? How are they configured? I know you have them on a controller card now - but how were they configured before?But, you did the right thing in the long run, a 133 controller card is what I would use for anything with more than two HDs. Connecting the CD-ROM, CD-Writer, DVD Player, etc to the two primary IDE channels does free up some data paths and keeps it all free of congestion or bottleknecks. Controller cards can cost as little as $15.00 if you shop around and thats a small price to pay for optimal performance.Hey bro, sell em and get SCSI Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Conan Posted October 27, 2002 Share Posted October 27, 2002 Maybe it's because you have them in a RAID array. I've got 2 Maxtor ATA 133's running on an ATA 100 system with no problems. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tinker Posted October 27, 2002 Share Posted October 27, 2002 Well Conan and MSNwar those are very good points. Yes Conan they are attached to a Promise FastTrack 2000 RAID card that works with ATA 133. However when I first got the drives I had a need to format one via the IDE bus and the system (mother board at the time was a ASUS P4T) would not see the drive. Settings in the BIOS were set to "Auto Detect" and the HDD was the master on IDE 0. I tried to and did boot from a set of Windows 98 floppy disk. When the boot program set it's self up it did not find the HDD...I have not tried a single ATA 133 on an IDE from the Intel mother board as of yet.If memory servers me correctly the BIOS did see the HDD, I think. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gamehead200 Posted October 27, 2002 Author Share Posted October 27, 2002 One more things, should I make it a Secondary Master or Secondary Slave (right now I have a 3GB as a Secondary Master). I have this 3GB HD as a removable drive, so I wouldn't have to open up my computer! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tinker Posted October 27, 2002 Share Posted October 27, 2002 I would make it the Secondary Master drive. Here (PC Guide) is some more information on how and why to set up your IDE channels for best perfromance........ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gamehead200 Posted October 28, 2002 Author Share Posted October 28, 2002 OK, so I guess I'm gonna get the 60GB or 80GB, but on the store's website, it says that for the system requirements, you need an ATA 66/100/133 compatible system. I have a 20GB Maxtor right now that I got last year. I'm not sure what it is. Could anyone take a guess? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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