ata-33 vs. ata-100

[dementg]

A friend of mine has had a hard drive go bad on him. The system is a Gateway 433c, which was probably made in mid to late 1999. He says it's a Celeron 433 (hence the model number I suppose) and the original drive is an 8GB drive. He's asking for my help to replace it. I don't know if it supports drives larger than 32GB - those were first appearing on the market around the time his computer was built, and I couldn't find any useful info about it at Gateway's web site.

I'm inclined to recommend a Western Digital 80GB "Special Edition" (WD800JB) drive, due to reliability concerns, not really for performance reasons. I've also found good prices on them.

I haven't looked at his computer, but it seems obvious that it probably has an ATA-33 interface w/ a 40-conductor drive cable. I'd like to have him get a Promise ATA-100/133 controller, but will it actually make a noticeable difference? He doesn't have a lot of money to throw around, so I don't want to tell him to buy a controller unless it will make a meaningful (not just theoretical) speed difference. If he smiles about his computer being faster, then I figure its worth it, but otherwise it'll seem to have been a waste.

Obviously we could end up having to get one anyway if his computer won't recognize 32GB+ drives, but I don't want to spend his money needlessly. Thanks for any insights.

 

[jhall01]

First of all many things equate to performance. How much ram does he have? what is the processor speed? It is probably a pentium 2 or 3 if it is using ata-33. Yes ata-100/133 will be a huge performance boost. As for the computer recognizing large harddrives you need to check your systems bios and see what it says.

I don't believe that really matters, what matters is what OS you have.

Let me see you have an 80gb drive for what about 60 bucks? and a promise controller for about 40?

If it is a pentium 2 or 3 unde 800 mhz i would try to find a good 18gb drive from pricewatch.com for about 30 bucks. If money is tight this is the best way to go. if you start getting up in the hundreds i would suggest buying a barebone system since you have a monitor, keyboard, mouse, OS.

http://www.shuttle.com/index6.html

http://www.am-comps.com

These are great barebone systems that you can get for under 300 bucks and your performance boost dollar for dollar is so much greater.

 

[paparazi]

I am going to go against the grain here and say you probably have a ATA66 drive (alot more common around this time) than ATA33, it will have a fine 80 core ultra cable.
I think the WD special addition is total overkill and a complete waste of money for this machine although may be a good investment for a future upgrade.
You would be much better off just going with a cheap ATA100 5,400rpm drive, something around the 20gig mark, as a direct and cheap replacement.
Because of all the other bottle necks (CPU/chipset/ram)
you really won't notice much differance between a special edition WD and a cheap 5,400rpm drive.
Remember, even a cheap ATA100 5,400 is going to improve things quite a bit over what he had.
Martin

Replying helps further our knowledge, without comment leaves us wondering.

 

[cdogg]

ATA/100 pulled into the mainstream around the time the P-III Coppermine came out. I doubt you have anything less than ATA/66 on your motherboard, as paparazi said.

You can find Promise controller cards for around $20 or less on pricewatch from dealers who buy in bulk OEM. If you find out that your motherboard does support ATA/66, then it probably won't be necessary to buy the IDE controller card, since running an ATA/100 drive at ATA/66 won't hurt it too bad - remember, there are worse bottlenecks in your system.

There's not much difference in cost between the 5400RPM or 7200RPM drives if you're in the US. Definitely stay with a cheap 2MB buffer cache version to save money, but go with 7200RPM.

Good luck!



~cdogg
[tab]"The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources"
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