35 replies
by egilden
by ebott
I've done a lot of research on the topic. (speed for a cheap price always gets me going) I found some interesting statistics regarding the two. Unfortuneatly their in my head so I can't give you a reference as to wherE I got them. Anyway, UDMA(?) is a burst speed, not a steady throughput. Manufactures want us to believe that it is though. Is UDMA66 faster than UDMA33? Definitely! Especially if you get a drive that is 7200RPM with at least 2 megs of cache. Because of system limitations,most computers are unable to utilize the UDMA100 to its potential. It is still a little faster that the UDMA66, but not worth the cost of having to buy a separate board to run it. If you are going to buy a top of the line drive, yeas go ahead and get UDMA100 for the drive, just use the built in UDMA66 slot on the board. They are compatible. You will love the boost in speed. Most people do not realize that just spending a little money to buy an 80 strand ribbon cable for UDMA66&100 will improve the overall performance of their UDMA33. 40 strand ribbons are prone to errors at the higher speeds.
Hope this helps
Jeff Cichocki
by ebott
by tom
by ebott
by techytype
Client machines implies secretaries and such. UDMA66 is good for this application. It is unlikely they will benefit from the extra throughput of the UDMA100. You are talking "Upgrade", this implies older machines. If the motherboards already copewith UDMA66 then great. Extremely unlikely the motherboards support UDMA100 so getting an advantage of the faster drive is unlikely. Also very likely is the existing motherboards only support UDMA33.
Combining the two factors, low demand applications and older motherboards I would stick with UDMA66 hard drives.
Of course if performance is an issue because maybe these systems are used by architects or rocket scientists or something then the landscape changes. I have to wonder about the wisdom of using adapter cards to get the capabilities of UDMA versus using a motherboard with this support included. Remembering the KISS principle anything added to a system represents more things that can (and seem to usually happen on Friday afternoon) go wrong. Another consideration, boosting the performance of the hard drive won't make any appreciable difference if the rest of the system is "slow." Upgrades are usually only a viable solution when client is looking to save money (this rules out UDMA100) or have run out of space.
Evaluate the usage of systems before deciding on hardware. Performance needs are dictated by the usage. Demanding applications such as CAD automatically means more, bigger, faster of everything. Word processing can get away with substantially less and the user wouldn't notice the difference in any way that qualifies as legitimate. Loading Word in 3 seconds versus 5 seconds doesn't qualify as an urgent matter. Search and Replace, moving from beginning to end, Block and Move, these operations are more likely to concern the typists and if they are slowed down here then the specifications for RAM are not adequate.
by ebott
by agschuller
All computers wait at the same speed.
I'd go with the UDMA66. It's been around longer and had been debugged. UDMA100 compatibility will be an issue. Would you put your client's precious data on a technology only months old. I wouldn't, not ifI wanted to maintain a working relationship with them. If you're going to experiment, do it with your machine first, not the clients.
by ebott
by jolt1
UDMA 66 and UDMA 100 work OK with windows 2000 IF the controller is onboard and/or you dont want any other operating systems and/or dont plan on trying to boot from an adaptec controller as well as dont mind freshly formatting your hard disk before install...
I have had nothing but nightmares with auxillary Ultra 66 controllers (Promise IDE) but have had acceptable results with Promise onboard.. if the rules were met..
by ebott
by ithink2020
What you want is the new Seagate Ultra SCSI drives. They gaurenty that they will run for 100+ years!!! Thats running time! It is also very fast. Faster than than the udma-100 drives.
Check out seagates website and MAXIMUM PC's Website
by ebott
by malli
by ebott
by iglover
I'll will post this from experience only. I have cable modem and did all the tweaks to speed it up. I then switch to a Maxtor 10 Gig
7200 RPM Ultra DMA 66 Hard drive and a Promise Ultra Dma Controller. It was very simple to install on NT 4.0( alsogave me the ability for 8 IDE ports 4 on card and 4 on the motherboard). Everything from the net get cached before being displayed. The result were nothing but astronomical. Did not need a faster computer just a fast controller and hard drive. So itwould depend on your application but with anything it would make a change. Word 2000 now comes up in a blink.
by ebott
by derrickj
I think it would be better to just go to ATA-100 Drive and controller, better yet, build an Athlon Thunderbird PC using an ABIT KT7-Raid motherboard that has a built ATA-66 and ATA-100 Raid controller on board. You can find benchmarks on this boardat the following sites: http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.html?i=1296
http://www.pcscoop.com/hardware/motherboards/ABIT/KT7-RAID/
by ebott
Hold off on UDMA-100.
I just bought a few drives for a "personal" server to run at home (thus IDE&!SCSI) they're Fujitsu MPF315423s which are UDMA-66. I'm using an old motherboard with a TX chipset and integrated UDMA-33. So I figured I'd go for a new IDE controller. I got the Promise Ultra100, which was only a few $$ more than the Ultra66 and I'd heard good things about the Ultra66. Installing W2K from scratch (F6 to supply the Ultra100 driver during setup) and everything looked good until the reboot. Windows couldn't find NTkernel32.sys (or something like that) and couldn't continue. I tried different partition sizes, and formats (FAT vs. NTFS) and it didn't make any difference. With FAT I was able to verify that the missing file was,in fact, in the directory where it was supposed to be (which doesn't necessarily mean it was actually where it was supposed to be on the disk ). The only way I could get it to work was to swap the 80-wire IDE cable with an old 40-wire cable. This knocked me down to Ultra-33 but at least I can install and boot W2K.
Since that fiasco, I've been haunting the news groups and Promise's Web site looking for a bios update, since my troubles don't seem to be driver related. On the groups, I've seen numerous reports of problems with the Ultra100, the workarounds are usually to use an Ultra66 if you can find one or us a 40-wire cable until they patch the BIOS.
I'm using version 1.60 of the driver and build 12 of the BIOS
Promise Ultra100 Downloads
http://support.promise.com/Support/All.asp?product=ultra100
by ebott
by 1pinoytechie
by ebott
by tanderson
by ebott
by spbrown
by ebott
by andreww
Quick answer: prob don't need ata100.
But buy fast drives, and they should run well on 66.
More, and links:
I am using one of IBM's latest HDs, which are very good, very fast, and quiet; under 2000.
This review from August 21, 2000, ranks them the best, and I quite respect this site.
It also explains why we don't really need 100 yet, as well, with a useful graph ata100 subpage.
http://www6.tomshardware.com/storage/00q3/000821/index.html
According to the whitepaper linked to below, no current hard drives need the extra speed offered by ATA100, and won't until later next year. It also has some graphs..
by ebott
by gala
Dear Ed
Use UDMA-100 Sure you will get performance
improved and you need to install drivers.
Sure thing
Good Luk
by ebott
by geroxx
by ebott
by ebott
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