Author Topic: ULTRA-ATA 5, ULTRA-ATA 133, Ultra DMA-100+33 WTF? (Read 697 times)

funkedup · « **on:** May 23, 2002, 04:13:42 PM »

What is the difference?

Staga · « **Reply #1 on:** May 23, 2002, 05:00:06 PM »

I could tell but then I'd have to kill you

Staga · « **Reply #2 on:** May 23, 2002, 05:01:22 PM »

http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/content/article/1431/
http://www.anandtech.com/guides/viewfaq.html?i=53

volsung1 · « **Reply #3 on:** May 23, 2002, 05:23:34 PM »

All of these are related to ide (harddrive) input/output speed. When you purchase a drive that is capable of ATA 100/133 speeds and mount it on a MoBo that can handle it. You can get VERY fast read write performance from your harddrive. Keep in mind though, that the ide will default to the speed of the slowest item that is connected to it. So, if you "daisy chain" an ATA133 drive to an ATA 66 hard drive, you will get a max performance level of the ATA 66 drive. CDRom Drives are universally ATA 33 and should never be daisy chained to a harddrive if it can be avoided.
Also, one of these harddrives requires an 80 wire (40 pin) IDE cable in order to function properly. The extra 40 wires are grounds that are required to reduce the inductive noise level in the higher freq. signals in use. These cables MUST be installed correctly, with the blue end going to the motherboard, in order to function properly.

funkedup · « **Reply #4 on:** May 23, 2002, 07:21:49 PM »

Thx Staga
So ATA-6 = DMA-133, ATA-5 = DMA-100. That's what I was looking for.

The "Ultra DMA-100+33" thing was from an Epox mobo spec sheet. I looked into it and they meant Ultra DMA-133.

AKWarp · « **Reply #5 on:** May 23, 2002, 11:06:14 PM »

Something else to consider about all this Ultra ATA stuff....

The speeds quoted for throughput in the ATA specs on IDE drives is burst speed capability of the internal controller and the cache and is usually only for a sustained time period of 3 milliseconds.

Real world throughput and actual, maintained read/write speeds will get no where near the listed speed capabilities.

I have a 5400 RPM ATA-66 hard drive in one system and a 7200 RPM ATA-100 drive in another. Benchmarks for drive performance are nearly equal in read and write performance for both drives. The reason is that most reads and writes are for data and files that far exceed what the internal controller or cache holds and takes a lot longer than 3 ms to transfer.

The biggest performance gains for read/write speeds has more to do with the rest of your system (i.e. processor, memory, bandwidth, 16 or 32 bit FAT, etc) and how you have your hard drive partitioned and if you keep it defragged.

Real world performance for most IDE drives will usually run around 6-10MB per second of sustained throughput. Some top-end systems may exceed this a bit, but usually not. Burst speed, or cached read/write performance will be quite high, but does not reflect actual useage.

If hard drive speed is a very important factor to you, then you should consider a SCI drive setup, and if you really want speed, then start thinking of a RAID array. These are, however not really necessary for the average home user.

Be very careful with IDE RAID setups as the majority of these controllers are software, not hardware based (basically any IDE RAID controller that costs less than about $150 is software based) and can cause a huge load on your processor. Striping 2 IDE drives via this method will usually get you a slight performance gain, but IMHO not enough to justify the cost. Hardware based IDE RAID controllers are expensive, and in real world tests really aren't any faster than a single IDE disk in your system. Hardware IDE RAID is really designed primarily for redundent (i.e. secure) data storage, not speed.

mason22 · « **Reply #6 on:** May 24, 2002, 10:12:40 AM »

go SCSI baby!!

turn the box on and it sounds like friggin fighter jets takin off!

LePaul · « **Reply #7 on:** May 28, 2002, 09:47:32 AM »

I have a Mylex RAID Controller I was using with my webserver...its got 32mb on the card and I have 5 IBM Ultra Wide SCSI drives (9gbs)...according to the card's specs, she'll sustain and do 133mb/sec. Its really really tempting to stick that pile of stuff in my AMD XP 2000+ system and have my PC sound like a Pratt & Whitney jet engine spooling up

maddog · « **Reply #8 on:** May 28, 2002, 10:41:22 AM »

Disk Drive bus speeds don't matter that much as previously stated.... the drives are slow compared to the bus.... ATA100+ is only marketing hype.. (was in development of ATA133)..... the next significant advance will be serial IDE.... hopefully this year... till then rotational speed is only "noticable" factor to consider...

LePaul · « **Reply #9 on:** May 28, 2002, 11:27:18 PM »

Ok, now Im too damn tempted...

I'm gonna stick the 5 9gb SCSI drives in my PC this weekend and the Mylex card in, just to see how freaking fast it'll go. Which level RAID would be best for a Game Machine? RAID 1 (Mirror) or go for the gold and do RAID 5? Ideas?

AKIron · « **Reply #10 on:** May 29, 2002, 10:31:54 AM »

I have a 10K RPM 36GB Ultra 160 SCSI drive that's no louder than a 7200 RPM IDE drive. I did expect it to be loud but was pleasantly surprised. Doesn't get very hot either, considering the speed.