!Hard Drive Issues UDMA, ATA33, ATA100 NEED HELP !

[LancerEvolution7]

First of all here is my configuration:
athlon xp1700
soltek sl-drv5 with via kt333 chipset

IBM 120GXP 80gigs partitioned into 5gb and 75gb
Ide 1 <
Sony 24x Cd-Rom

Asus 24x10x40 cdrw
Ide 2 <
Pioneer DVD Drive


Now when my computer boots up and lists all the drives on the ide channels, they say something like this

hard drive ata33
cdrom drive ata33
cdrw drive ata33
dvd drive ata33

Is all of them being ata33 normal? My hard drive supports ata100, why isn't it at ata100? This was my first time building a computer and I didn't touch the bois except for the boot sequences, the voltage controls and the fsb controls. On my other computer the hard drive says udma. Did I do something wrong? Is this slowing down my systems performance? Please help me.

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[Napoleon]

Should be ATA100 for the HD at least. Are you sure you have 80-wire ATA66/100/133 IDE cables? Some mobos and IDE controllers are able to recognize if older 40-wire ATA33 cables are used and default to ATA33 speed to avoid transfer errors.


<font color=red><b><i>You want WHAT on the [-peep-] CEILING?!</i></b></font color=red> -Michelangelo

 

[LancerEvolution7]

I looked on my other computer. The configuration is
Pentium iii 933
30 gig ibm ??gxp
Asus cusl2-c intel 815ep chipset

Now that board only supports udma. So the bootup screen looks like this,

prim master HD: udma5
prim slave cdrw: udma2
sec master :none
sec slave cdrom: mode4

Can someone please explain to me the difference between udma and uata and tell me which is better. Whats mode4?
How can you tell an 80 pin ide cable from a 40 pin cable?

"If you sign up for AOL now, we'll give you 1024 hours of slow service and disconnects free of charge"

 

[Napoleon]

UDMA, (U)ATAxxx... same thing, different names. If I remember correctly:

UDMA 2 = ATA33
UDMA 3 = ATA??
UDMA 4 = ATA66
UDMA 5 = ATA100
UDMA 6 = ATA133

Mode 4 refers to PIO mode 4 (Programmed IO), going back to the ancient days when no fancy DMA stuff was available. Check the HDD FAQ in this forum for more info.

As for identifying the cable, uh, well, take it out and count the wires? Other than that, connectors on the 80-pin ATA66/100/133 cables are colour-coded (black, grey, blue). Also, if the mobo BIOS defaults to ATA33 because of the cable, it would probably display a note about it, something like "Primary IDE channel no 80 conductor cable installed". IMO, it's somewhat unlikely that your IDE cables are the root of the problem, but that's the first thing that came to my mind.


<font color=red><b><i>You want WHAT on the [-peep-] CEILING?!</i></b></font color=red> -Michelangelo

 

[LancerEvolution7]

Thanks for the info. It was the cable, I changed it with another cable and it displayed ata100. Musta been an old cable, though it looked exactly the same.

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[Crashman]

66/100/133 cables are color coded, they have to go on a certain way to work at full speed.

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[lhgpoobaa]

hehe.
stung by old ata33 cables. tragic.
once you have seen the two side by side its easy to spot the better 80wire ones, much finer and colour coded.


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[camieabz]

Blue end to the mobo. Other end to the master. Middle to the slave.

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[Napoleon]

Just a little correction to the naming of various transfer modes. Seagate website has this <A HREF="http://www.seagate.com/training/ata/unit1/mt1p2.html" target="_new">tutorial</A> about them.


<font color=red><b><i>You want WHAT on the [-peep-] CEILING?!</i></b></font color=red> -Michelangelo