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Thread ID: 42217 2004-02-04 08:23:00 Confusion, IDE-ATA-SCSI MrBeef (342) Press F1
Post ID Timestamp Content User
212784 2004-02-04 08:23:00 Hi there, i have been looking for a new hard drive on trademe.

I know that my current HDD is IDE (Seagate 6.4gb)

I am looking to get another either 10 or 20 gb hard drive and i see all this ATA and SCSI, i know SCSI is for servers and such and THAT does require an add-on card or something.

But ATA confuses me.

For example, say a HDD was ATA-133 will it work on an IDE cable?


Oh, my comp specs are
Compaq Deskpro EP
Intel Celeron 500mhz
192 megs of ram
Intel 810e chipset


Cheers in advance
MrBeef (342)
212785 2004-02-04 08:34:00 Hi Mr Beef,

ATA is a reference to the data transfer rate which is dependant on the specifications of your computers data bus. The 133 is the Mhz rating for that particular device. Your computer should be quite happy running 100/133Mhz hard drives.

HTH :)
Gorela (901)
212786 2004-02-04 08:39:00 Are thanks for clearing things up

So ATA is just how fast the data is transfered at .

Excellent i can now look at Auctions which say ATA :P
MrBeef (342)
212787 2004-02-04 09:20:00 What sort of system are you having. Most of the old machines cannot support more than 8GB harddisk. Check your motherboard specs before you get a harddisk larger than 8GB

Cheers
tmrafi (5179)
212788 2004-02-04 09:20:00 > Excellent i can now look at Auctions which say ATA :P

Almost - Serial-ATA is a different thing to the other two (IDE and SCSI) - it uses a different plug, which your system probably isn't compatible with.

Mike.
Mike (15)
212789 2004-02-04 09:56:00 > What sort of system are you having. Most of the old
> machines cannot support more than 8GB harddisk. Check
> your motherboard specs before you get a harddisk
> larger than 8GB
>
> Cheers

Well seeing as how i bought my comp off trademe i dont have the mobo manual and i cant find any specs of it..or am i not looking hard enough..

I have a manual which goes on about RAM and the graphics controller

CHeers
MrBeef (342)
212790 2004-02-04 09:59:00 >Almost - Serial-ATA is a different thing to the other two (IDE and SCSI) - it uses a different plug, which >your system probably isn't compatible with.

Unless you purchase a PCI adaptor card - anyone seen these yet?
JohnD (509)
212791 2004-02-04 20:43:00 > Well seeing as how i bought my comp off trademe i dont have the mobo manual and i cant find any specs of it..

Aida32 should give you quite a bit of info about your system. ;-)
Fire-and-Ice (3910)
212792 2004-02-05 00:45:00 An ATA-100 or ATA-133 drive won't work at full speed unless you use an 80 wire cable . You can tell by comparing the flat cable with the one going to a floppy . The pitch (wires/inch) of the wires is different by a factor of two .

It will still work with a 40 wire cable, but the BIOS will complain mildly, and make it run at the ATA-66 speed . :D
Graham L (2)
212793 2004-02-05 03:02:00 oh well thats alright then



Also people on trademe say they have HDD out of XBOXes and they have "unlocked" them, how reliable would these be?
MrBeef (342)
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