ATA 100/133

[nychris86]

What would the difference be between an ATA 100 hard drive and an ATA 133? The mobo I'm getting supports ata 133. I've got two choices for a hard drive; a Western Digital 40 gb 7200rpm ata 100, and a Maxtor 40 gb 7200rpm ata 133. The Maxtor is hardly more expensive than the Western Digital, and it has ata 133; but I've heard good things about WD, and haven't heard much about Maxtor.

Anyone care to make a suggestion?

 

[Mavrick007]

Aside from the brand names(Maxtor and WD are both top quality drives), the difference between ata100 and ata133 is the speed that transfers will occur. Ata133 is faster, but on conventional ide buses the drives never reach to the top potential. Also as drives get larger, the ata100 bus will no longer be sufficient so you will have to use the ata133 compatible board(on drives that are larger than 137Gigs).

Cache makes more sense when ide drives are compared(ie. compare the WD 80gig ata100 8meg cache to an 80gig Maxtor ata133 2meg cache and you'll find the 8meg WD is superior in speed).

 

[TheCorm]

I have a question related to this.

I am about to reinstall windows 2000 and 98 on my PC in conjunction with a change to an Athlon XP and new motherboard. My plan is to install again onto relevant partitions on my 30gb ATA-100 hard disk. I do have a 60gb ATA-133 disk in there as well, both spin at 7200rpms.

I was just wondering if anyone out there has any comments as to why I would be better off using the ATA-133 drive? Or do you reckon the difference will be none or negligable.

The motherboard is a KT333 based board so does support ATA-133 but I was thinking that burst rates never go above ATA-66 speeds anyway as Mavrick007 points out. I normally reinstall once a year anyway as part of an upgrade or general housekeeping.

Corm