Western DIg 80gig and a Ultra ATA100 PCI card

I benchmarked my old WD ATA33 drive and my ATA100 drive (like yours is on a PCI controller) and the ATA100 scored much higher. How this translates to real-world performance I don't know. But hey you got it so you may as well use it!


I had the exact same problem with my Promise100Tx2 card. Here's what I did:

1. Make the bootable floppy with fdisk utility on it (copy it).
1. Make sure your BIOS is up to date (i.e. can support 80Gb drives).
2. Disconnect your old drive if you have one.
3. Reboot with bootable floppy.
4. Format and partition.

The key step for me was #2 above. So long as my old drive was installed with an OS, my system refused to recognize the new ATA100 drive.


After it is partitioned and all the partitions are formatted, and the OS is installed then set your BIOS to boot of that drive. Make sure things are cool, then reconnect your old drive(s).<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by Flyboy on 02/10/02 05:54 AM.</EM></FONT></P>

I benchmarked my old WD ATA33 drive and my ATA100 drive (like yours is on a PCI controller) and the ATA100 scored much higher. How this translates to real-world performance I don't know. But hey you got it so you may as well use it!

Oh I'll bet thats the casr indeed. I would expect that. But my question was "is there a major difference betwen a regular none 7200rpm EIDE drive(not set to use ata-33 and one that is set to use ATA-33. After the purchase CompUSA told me I would only see a 1% increase if I utilized the ATA-33 part of the drive.



Oh man, I don't wanna reformat. I just started filling this drive back to whwre it was plus a bit more. That doesn;t seem logical that you would have to format first. Especially since the manual says I must load the drivers for the card in windows first. OH, I'll keep your helpful info in mind. Perhaps I shoulda bout a name brand card rather than a CompUSA card.

I think I misunderstood something. So your saying that the drive already has the OS installed and you simply want to update it to the ATA100 standard? If this is the case then you shouldn't have to format your drive!

Whew! I'm glad you say I should not have to start from a formated drive.

Can you clarify this for me. Here is the specs again.
My western Digitalis an EIDE drive compatible with ATA-33 all the way up to UltaATA-100
My motherboard specs say its compatible up to only ATA-33

The ATA card I bought is an Ultra-ATA-100 card

So will the UltraATA-100 card allow for the bypassing of the motherboards limitation of ATA-33? Or does the motherboard ultimatley dictate that area?

Seems like I would be able to bypass the MB limit since you can also buy various cards that increase speeds for parallel ports etc.

I get conflicting answers from CompUSA's tech crew. Frankly, I have never been happy with thier knowledge although its still better than mine.

"So will the UltraATA-100 card allow for the bypassing of the motherboards limitation of ATA-33? Or does the motherboard ultimatley dictate that area? "

Yes, the PCI controller card operates independently of any limitation of the MB. The drive will be noticably faster running off the PCI controller card.

"If it weren't for the last minute, alot of things wouldn't get done"

Yes. Having an ATA100 PCI card does bypass the motherboards limitation of ATA33. For example, my P2B-F motherboard only supports ATA33 just as yours. But I installed a Promise100Tx2 PCI card that now allows my hardrives to operate at ATA100.

Does ATA100 perform significantly better than ATA33? IMO,it is a decent improvement over the ATA33 standard but not significant at all with respect to ATA66. The bandwidth for the PCI bus is b/w 50-80MBps, while the maximum bandwidth for your ATA100 drive is 100MBps. Therefore very rarely will your hardrive transmit over 80Mbps. This is why some people don't even bother with ATA100. ATA66 is very comparable in real world performance to ATA100. This could change in the future though...

So if I were you I would definitely try to get ATA100 working.

So let's see if we can figure out why your drive is not being recognized on the ATA100 controller.

1. Are you using a ATA100 cable? This cable is different from its ATA33 ancestor because it has like twice as many conductors.
2. Which brand and model ATA-100 card did you buy? I want to do some research on it...
3. Is the WD 80Gb drive the only drive (hardrive) in the system?
4. Please give your motherboard model.


<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by Flyboy on 02/10/02 07:19 PM.</EM></FONT></P>

Thanks Speedy.
I was hoping that was the case. The CompUSA tech crew told me different. Not surprising is that.
Pete J.

Thanks Flyboy. You and speedy seem to concure that the card will definatly override the MB. I had a feeling but you always hope someone in the biz nows better.

1. Are you using a ATA100 cable? This cable is different from its ATA33 ancestor because it has like twice as many conductors.
This strange. Only just noticing this. The card is an Ultra ATA-100. Yet the manual says the cable that is included is only a 40-pin/80-wire Ultra ATA-66 cable.
Is that logical? Common?

2. Which brand and model ATA-100 card did you buy? I want to do some research on it...

probably a bad choice but it is a CompUSA brand. The install disk was a generic CD meaning that it had tones of folders for several different unrelated and related products. That was not helpful as the folders were not well named.I did find the right driver folder though. The drivers that loaded are of the same name as the card.
SKU # 276326
Manual refers to it as:
CMD's PCI-649 PCI Ultra DMA 100 P/N:276326

3. Is the WD 80Gb drive the only drive (hardrive) in the system?

Total system:
1 EIDE 80gig WD HD(Primary)
1 MAXTOR 30.1 gig(I don't think its EIDE ULTRA ATA compliant. Will check) I did not connect it to the PCI ATA card. I also have a CD-R/RW and a DVD drive I did not include them with the ATA card either.

Please give your motherboard model:
SOYO SY-6BA+III(discontinued) I believe the site is www.soyousa.com

Monday I will call the National CompUSA tech line. I'm only just found out today that such a number exists. Perhaps a national texh support will be more helpful than a store tech.

Relax on your efforts for a day or so. I'll inform you wether the Tech number was able to help me or not. That way your efforts won't be wasted.

Pete

Yes this is fine. The ATA66 and ATA100 standards both use 40-pin/80-conductor cables.


O.k. thanks. I'll do some digging on this card.


O.k. this is one of my concerns. When I installed my new ATA100 drive, I had to remove my old 10Gb WD hardrive in order for my NEW one on the ATA100 controller to be recognized. I think the problem was that my old drive still had the OS installed and it was set as the PRIMARY partition.

So, I strongly recommend that you try disconnecting your old Maxtor 30Gb drive and see if you can get the system to recognize your new drive on the ATA100 controller. However, if your new drive is the one with the OS installed and currently contains the active partition, then I doubt removing the old Maxtor drive will do any good.

Also, did you try moving your PCI card to a different slot? Mine refused to work in one of my PCI slots (I think it was #3 or 4..).

I think when I said I didn't know if my secondary drive, the MAXTOR, was EIDE drive I was beeing dumb. AParantly any drive over 528meg is an EIDE drive based on my manual. It does not however mention Ultra ATA.

The ATA cards manual says that be sure to place the card in the corecct PCI slot. The one that supports bus mastering. My MB manual says they all do. But I will try other slots

Yes this is fine. The ATA66 and ATA100 standards both use 40-pin/80-conductor cables. I thought so but I was also think that since they refwered to as an ATA-66 cable that it was somehow limiting. I'm gonna go to the Store and find out if my old MAXTOR 30.1 gig is ATA-able. CompuSA website lits my model nuber but they don't list it as a 30.1 gig. Its not really that old. Only about a year.

My guess is that the Maxtor is ATA66 capable, but not ATA100. It may be ATA100 though because ATA100 came out a little over a year ago I believe.

Don't confuse yourself too much about EIDE. EIDE stands for Enhanced Integrated Drive (or Disk) Electronics. It simply refers to the interfacing standard for large capacity storage device, i.e. your hardrive. As far as I know all drives sold today are either EIDE or SCSI.


Correct. Sounds like your learning a great deal! So yes, you still need to find out whether your Maxtor 30Gb. supports ATA100. If it doesn't just leave it on the Primary or secondary IDE channels on your motherboard. If it does support ATA100, then I would use the ATA100 controller card that you bought.

Hey, Flyboy. I'm good to go.

Aparantly my old drive was running UDMA 33(nor did I know what that meant) by default. I never thought that UDMA and Ultara ATA were basically the same. So while I see at difference running at ATA-100 its not substancial. But, every bit helps so to speak. Seams there a few things I was not aware of. First, western digitals utility software can't function when the drive is connected to a controller card. Second, the ATA management utilities provided by WD are only for disabling. All WD drives that support ATA have that enabled by default. For a short will I was having trouble booting into windows(windows protection error. Restart Windows) Eventually I was forced to do a reinstall of windows. Once in I removed the controller card drivers plus the no longer needed references to generic drive types(type46,47, etc. according to WD support). Reinstalled the contoller drivers and I'm rolling. Now I have to MB bound IDE ports that are free that I can use to connect my CD-R/ DVD drives to. Perhaps now my CD-R drive wich functioned prior to getting the new w 80gig will work again. I know CD-R's are testy but its more unresponsive than usual. But thats another forum thread of wich no one has even responded to yet. Thanks for your help on this. You been very helpful indeed.
Pete J.

I had similar problems with my IBM drive fitness test software.



So are you saying that you finally got the 80Gb drive to be detected? If so, did you install the OS on it or is it still on the 30Gb Maxtor?




More unresponsive in what way? So you have the system set up as follows?:

Primary IDE MASTER: 30Gb Maxtor
Primary IDE SLAVE: Cd-rom
Secondary IDE MASTER: CD-R
Primary ATA100 (PCI) MASTER: 80Gb WD

Is this correct? I would think this would be a great set up. Most people recommend putting the CD-R drive on its own IDE channel as MASTER.



Hey your welcome, although I really feel that I wasn't able to help you out. I did a lot of researching but couldn't find anything! CMD's website only offered drivers- no troubleshooting guides/tips. I couldn't find anything relevant for your motherboard either. Oh well. Its good to hear you figured it out! As frustrating as these problems can be, they sure can teach you a lot if your patient!

is promise ata133 tx2 controller card compatible with EPOX 8kha+?? i heard some people are having problems with that.

my newer hard drive supports ata133, but it's 60 gb. and i want to use my 30 gb ata100 as booting driver..

is it better to use faster drive as booting driver??

<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by taiwoong on 02/15/02 02:40 AM.</EM></FONT></P>