ATA 66 / ATA 100 HDD issue 1

[Juleswc]

in one of my old PC's the HDD has packed in, the motherboard will only support ATA 66 HDD (from what it says in the manual)... and I dont't really want to replace the motherboard only the HDD.

My question is, can I use a ATA 100 drive?? or does it have to be an ATA 66 drive?

Thanks for any help!

Jules

 

[dkdude]

Jules,

Yes, you can run ATA-100 on the ATA-66 bus! It will, of course, only run in ATA-66 mode then!

Good Luck §;O)


Jakob

 

[cdogg]

It might not be worth it to you, but you could buy a PCI IDE controller card. They come in two flavors - single and dual channel. Single will give you one extra IDE channel, while dual of course will give you two. The advantage is that you could run an ATA/100 or ATA/133 drive at full speed on its own channel.

Just remember that the performance gain you would get from a faster hard drive would probably be minimal since older systems have many bottlenecks like RAM, CPU, and audio/video cards. Just be sure to grab a 7200RPM drive. Some have 8MB of cache which is also a plus.

~cdogg
[tab]"All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind"
[tab][tab]- Aristotle

 

[Juleswc]

Thanks for your help & suggestions guys!
Jules