ATA/100 HDU connected to ATA/66 controller

[Guest]

Two years ago, thinking a 20Gb harddrive should be enough, now I'm a bit disappointed I did not choose a bigger drive.

I want to purchase an IBM 60GXP 7200 rpm UDMA 100, but I'm not sure if I can use this drive properly. I have read the flatcable will fit because it's just the same as the one I use now (40PINs). I'm aware it will be impossible to access the drive on the specified speed, but I'm satisfied with my current speed, but I need more drivespace.

If it is possible, do I connect this new drive on the same flatcable using 'cable select' or 'slave' or should connect to my other IDE/66 connector using 'slave'.

Do you have experience with this issue, please let me know.

(current config: Abit BE6-II, P3 500MHz, 128Mb/100, IBM 34 GXP 20Gb, Matrox G400, CDR/CDRW, FDD)

Please help me out......
Robol

 

[lhgpoobaa]

firstly...
to use ATA66 or ATA100 you have to use one of those 80wire ribbon cables. the 40wire ones will hamstring you back to ata33!
all the cables use the same plugs.

ideally, to get the maximum performance out of your new zippy drive, you will want to do the following things

A. use a 80wire cable
B. have the drive as master, preferably on its own so it doesnt have to share precious bandwidth.

bear in mind that you can run your ata100 drive at 66 (hell i ran mine for a while at 33), but you are limited to the ata66 protocol of 66mb/sec. it shouldnt be too noticable.
unless you have a dell or gateway just use the drive as master or slave, where appropriate.

P.S. if your computer freezes upon drive detection after installing the new drive, then you have another problem thats related to the bios. Hopefully your motherboard is modern enough not to have this issue.
cheers


<font color=purple>Win ME Slayer. And PROUD of it!</font color=purple>

 

[Guest]

Thanks.

My current drive is already connected with that 80wire cable. I will connect my zippy drive to that slave connector. What do you think.

What BIOS-problems can I expect. Should I adjust some settings first?

How much bandwith do I share. Please explain.

Thanks, wish me luck....

 

[lhgpoobaa]

good good.
zip drives have a tendancy to make other drives run slow, so its best if they are by themselves or another slow component.

bandwidth.
you have an ata66 controller & cable.
that means for that particular channel you can transfer a theoretical maximum of 66Mb/sec (bit lower in real life)
so if u attach a fast new hard drive & its defragged well then u can expect it to transfer up to 40Mb/sec, a significant chunk of your total bandwidth.
add in your older drive to the same channel and you may begin to experience bottlenecks. nothing drastic, but still not desirable.

same happened to me with my 60GXP on an ata33 controller... the sustained transfer rate of the drive was greater than the available bandwidth of 33mb/sec, thus performance suffered.

as for your bios, just set the required fields to autodetect and reboot. your motherboard SHOULD detect the drive without any issues.
if it doesnt, get back to me.

<font color=purple>Win ME Slayer. And PROUD of it!</font color=purple>

 

[Guest]

Finally I've hooked both the disks to the 80 wires ribbon cable and all drivers and the BIOS are upgraded.

Unfortunately my system locks up when I copy e.g. 5Gb data from C to D.
Funny thing is that in safe mode I'm able to even copy 20Gb without any problem. What can I do to resolve this.

P.S.
According my mobo supplier (ABIT) it is possible to have a 75Gb disk. According SiSoft Sandra I should break the drive into smaller partitions or use FAT32 but both the disks are already formatted FAT32.

 

[kief]

Make sure you have all the latest updates for your motherboard. If you are using windows 2000 or XP convert to an NTFS file system, much better then FAT32!

Jesus saves, but Mario scores!!!

 

[lhgpoobaa]

works in safe mode hmmmm....

yours is a Via motherboard isnt it?
kt133/kt133a/kt266/kt266/kt333?

if so install the latest via 4in1 drivers, and give them a go.

and 75gb is a bit large for fat32... you are gonna have cluster sizes of 32 or 64k...

Today on Toms: Trisexual hamsters, anal applications of peanut butter and Marrige councilling!

 

[Guest]

It's a Abit BE6-II with PIII 500 running on Windows 98SE.
Max for FAT32 is 75Gb but I have a 60Gb (bootdisk is 20Gb).
Remember, in Safe Mode, everything works SUPER.
All available upgrades for Bios and drivers are done.

 

[lhgpoobaa]

yaa. you have a rather strange problem on your hands. *scratches head*

you can TRY removing the zip drive alltogether, just to rule it out with the problem solving.

other than that its gotta be something to do with the busmaster drivers or DMA.

try booting up normally, but disabling DMA, see if tha has any effect

Today on Toms: Trisexual hamsters, anal applications of peanut butter and Marrige councilling!