IDE Training Course, Part 1: A Detailed Look at the Basics and Technology

Test Configuration

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Test System
Processor Intel Pentium 4, 2 GHz, 256 kB L2-Cache (Willamette)
Motherboard Intel 845EBT,845E chipset
RAM 256 MB DDR/PC2100, CL2Micron/Crucial
IDE controller i845E UltraDMA/100 controller (ICH4)
Graphics card ATI Radeon SDRAM, 32 MB
Network 3COM 905TX PCI 100 Mbit
Operating systems Windows XP Pro 5.10.2600
Benchmarks and Measurements
Office applications ZD WinBench 99 - Business Disk Winmark 1.2
High-end applications ZD WinBench 99 - Highend Disk Winmark 1.2
Performance test ZD WinBench 99 - Disc Inspection TestHD Tach 2.61
I/O performance Intel I/O Meter
Drivers and Settings
Graphics driver 5.1.2001.0 (Windows XP standard)
IDE driver Intel Application Accelerator 2.2
DirectX version 8.1
Screen resolution 1024x768, 16 bit, 85 Hz refresh

Benchmarks

Data Transfer Performance

Those were the days! These days you can barely do anything with maximum transfer rates of some 8.6 MB/s (Quantum UltraDMA/33). The first truly remarkable improvement in performance was brought about by the first generation of IDE hard drives featuring 7,200 rpm and UltraDMA/66.

Burst Performance

Latest Videos FromTom's Hardware

This clearly shows what each interface has to offer. While the first two UltraDMA/33 drives had access times of some 30 MB/s, the maximum (reading from the hard drive's cache) jumped to over 50 MB/s with Seagate's Barracuda ATA (UltraDMA/66), and today's UltraDMA/100 hard drives feature an impressive 86 MB/s. This upper limit will soon be pushed significantly, with the introduction of Serial ATA.

Patrick Schmid
Editor-in-Chief (2005-2006)

Patrick Schmid was the editor-in-chief for Tom's Hardware from 2005 to 2006. He wrote numerous articles on a wide range of hardware topics, including storage, CPUs, and system builds.