5200rpm and 7200rpm 4

[trichard]

Hey,
I currently have a Western Digital 5200rpm 40gig hard drive istalled in my computer and I need more space. Therefore, I'm going to buy my friend's Maxtor 7200rpm 40gig hard drive off of him. I was wondering if there would be any kind of conflict because of the two different rpms of the hard drive. If so, what is the conflict? Thanks for reviewing my thread.

 

[cdogg]

Nope, none at all! The speeds of the drive don't matter at all to your system - they can be different. The only thing you need to be concerned about is the interface each supports. In other words, both probably at least support ATA/66. However, if one supported ATA/100 for example, and the other ATA/66, then both would run at ATA/66.

Of course, it also depends on what your motherboard supports as well. Chances are, you'll be just fine mixing the two drives on the same IDE channel.


~cdogg

"The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources."
- A. Einstein

 

[RICHINMINN]

trichard,
cdogg is correct, in that it doesn't matter whether a drive is spinning at 5400 RPM or 7200 RPM; some drives running at 5400 RPM can transfer data faster than other drives running at 7200 RPM. Look at the ATA rating. An ATA100 drive will move data 3 times as quickly as an ATA33 drive, and 1-1/2 times as fast as an ATA66 drive.

Be aware, though, that running two devices with different ATA values on the same IDE cable, one as master and one as slave, will force both drives to run at the slower rate. Assume, for example, that you have two hard drives, one ATA66 and the other ATA33, and an ATA33 CD-ROM drive. Some people would put both hard drives together on one IDE cable (IDE0), and the CD-ROM drive on the other IDE cable (IDE1). Doing this, however, would slow your ATA66 hard drive down to match the speed of the ATA33 hard drive (half as fast!). You'd be better off to put just the ATA66 drive on the IDE0 cable as a bootable drive, then put both the ATA33 hard drive and the CD-ROM drive on the IDE1 cable, since they're running at the same rate.

Rich (in Minn.)

 

[trichard]

Hey,
Thanks a lot for your replies. You have been very insightful and knowledgeable. Especially about the ATAspeeds. I'll be sure that I make sure to check all of those things that you have mentioned.
Once again, Thanks.

 

[CitrixEngineer]

Quote /"An ATA100 drive will move data 3 times as quickly as an ATA33 drive, and 1-1/2 times as fast as an ATA66 drive."/ Quote

Theoretically, anyway. Not practically.


If you can find an ATA 100 disk that can transfer data at a sustained 100Mb/Sec, send it to me with some ketchup, and I'll eat it.



(it's Friday!)


The ATA numbers are a good indication of how fast the drive is, but so are other factors, such as disk access and seek time. The cache can also make a difference - look for benchmarks on the WD drives that have an 8Mb cache.

These latter figures are useful for selecting one ATA 100 drive as opposed to another. Note that Maxtor make an ATA 133 drive, but it is not significantly faster than any ATA 100 drive. CitrixEngineer@yahoo.co.uk

 

[HddGuru]

Interesting stuff !

What you want is a high UDMA speed and a High Spindle speed + the correct 80 conductor UDMA 66-133 cable. I have tested 10,000 of drives and the best bet for me is the Seagate Barracuda ATA iV , best made, best looking etc etc ...... Keep it cool though and you'll have no trouble

Wd, Quantum , Fujitsu (he he) , Maxtor and IBM are pretty crap for the last 2 years ..... Believe me I know