Quick question - do ATA100 hard drives work from ATA66 motherboards?

[Guest_imported]

I need a new hard drive for an old motherboard - but will it wor?

 

[edfair]

Yes. Ed Fair
unixstuff@juno.com
Any advice I give is my best judgement based on my interpretation of the facts you supply. Help increase my knowledge by providing some feedback, good or bad, on any advice I have given.

 

[bygeek]

Not necessarily. Depending on the speed and the bios of the MB, the new HD may not work. The easiest way to avoid headaches if you're not sure is pick up an ata 100 controller card and plug the new HD into the card. This should avoid compatibility issues.

 

[paparazi]

The above are both correct!!
Newer hard drives ATA 100/133 will work as they are backward compatible but what bygeek is saying is that on some motherboards the larger capacity of the newer drive ie: 40gig instead of say a 6.4gig may not be recognised in the bios.
As long as the motherboard is not too old ,and by the sounds of it isn't that old (you said your old drive was ATA66 which was the standard only two years ago) the board can be made to recognise the larger hard drive with a simple bios flash upgrade available from the makers website.
Fingers crossed. XXXX Martin Just trying to help, sometimes falling short, I am only human after all.

 

[Guest_imported]

Thanks for the help everybody - I can buy a new hard drive with confidence now. The worse case scenario is that I have to buy a new controller card if my HD doesnt work properly - I can live with that!

 

[Guest_imported]

Aaarrgghh!

I was mistaken - my motherboard only supported ATA33. When I try to fdisk I get the message: 'No fixed discs present'.

Could this be because the motherboard is too old to handle the new drive?

I tried flashing the BIOS, but it didn't work - the last update was in 1999. The board's a Jetway J-7XB.

Could anybody tell me where I can buy a cheap controller card? £50 is about the cheapest I've seen so far, and the Hard Drive only cost me £68!

 

[Guest_imported]

I should point out that I live in the UK, so I can't buy online from US stores, only UK.

 

[ceh4702]

you have to set the hard drive up in the bios for sectors and tracks before you can find it. Did you do this? If you do not like my post feel free to point out your opinion or my errors.

 

[garwain]

Before going to buy the card,
1) make sure the BIOS is set the autodetect on all 4 (pri-master, pri-slave, sec-master, sec-slave), and make sure the jumpers on the drive are set properly. If you have 2 pri-masters, one will be ignored

2) the drive has it's jumpers set correctly and the BIOS doesn't autodetect it? try using the dectection utility in the BIOS.

3) still nothing? Get the stats for the drive of the manufacturer's website, then go into the BIOS and set up the drive manually.

4) if that didn't work, now start looking for a controler card.

I have worked with similar situations and have not yet had to buy an controler card to solve this problem (several times I've had to put one in due to some idio... client wanting several smaller drives in their computer instead of buying 1 or 2 large ones. I'm now waiting to go back when one of the drives gives up it's ghost, since they were all old 5G drives that were several years old already...

 

[Guest_imported]

Disaster has struck!

I managed to get the Hard Disk recognised by the BIOS thanks to your advice.
I used Maxtor's own software to partition and format the Hard Drive, and everything seemed OK.

Then I went into the BIOS, auto-detected the HD, which recommended I changed the cylinder settings.
WHat a mistake.

My computer will not boot up now - it gives the name of the BIOS and the type of processor (Celeron 333), and then hangs up.
I can't get into the BIOS any more. I can't use a boot disc. The keyboard is plugged in but doesn't do anything.

Have I destroyed my computer - what can I do about it?

I tried unplugging the hard drive (which now makes a nasty noise at bootup) - still nothing.

Help!!!!!

 

[paparazi]

Clear the motherboard CMOS usually a 3 prong jumper next to the onboard lithium battery (common type) simply move the jumper to the spare prong (and the common centre prong)for a few seconds then back again (with computer turned off and unplugged) this should reset everything back to default and allow you back into bios. Martin Just trying to help, sometimes falling short, I am only human after all.

 

[EricHui]

Yes, new HDD can be down grade to use in ATA-66. Make sure to use 80 pins cable.

 

[Guest_imported]

Thanks for the tip Paparazi - I really thought I'd wrecked the BIOS, but it reset OK - luckily for me!

It turns out my motherboard only supports ATA-33, but my hard drive is showing signs of responding with correct cables/jumpers.

 

[Danp129]

An IDE/ATA33/66/100/133 are all backward/foreward compatible. As mentioned before the limitation will be the maximum amount of the drive the BIOS will recognize.. Going by the age of your motherboard (integrated ATA33 controller), your first possible limitation would be an 8.4 GB limit. If this is the case, you have a few options (in order of my recommendation):

1.) The may be a flash upgrade available for you motherboard, check the MFG's website.

2.) Buy a new controller card.

3.) Buy a new motherboard

4.) Install a drive overlay (use maxblast disk) Note that using a drive overlay sucks

One thing to note is that you won't see the full potential of your hard drive on a slow system. I benchmarked my system through 3 CPU upgrades using the same hard drive, and each time the performance in the SisoftSandra HD tests got better (the chipset on the MB plays a big role in that as well).

If you have to resort to buying a new controller, you might weigh in the cost of a new motherboard/cpu/ram upgrade instead (if you're already planning to do so, now is a good time).

related info:

http://www.storage.ibm.com/hdd/library/8.4gb.htm

 

[Guest_imported]

Thanks for the reply DanP.

New motherboards or controller cards weren't really an option (its an ultra-cheap system I'm putting together), and the BIOS upgrade (last upgraded in 1999) didn't support ATA100.

I finally resorted to the maxblast drive overlay (well it IS a maxtor HD). Performance isn't really an issue - the PC is being used as an MP3 dukebox primarily.
It seems to work fine at the moment - fingers crossed!

Thanks for the help, everyone!