ATA100 or UltraDMA100?

[Webwing]

I´m a bit confused. Some places refer to a HDD as IDE ATA100 or 133 and in some other places they refer to it as DMA100 or 133.
The ATA100 is still IDE? is UltraDMA100 also IDE?
I have an ASUS A7V133 motherboard and it comes with two pairs of connectors one pair for "plain" IDE and another for ATA100!?
Originaly I bought an IBM Deskstar and I connect it to the ATA100 connectors. My CDROM drive is connected to the "normal" IDE connector. Recently I bought a Seagate HDD which is ATA133. To which connectors should I plug the Seagate HDD?
For instance when the computer is starting up and it shows the primary/secondary (master/slave)drives it only shows the CDROM, then on the screen that follows it shows my IBM HDD. Everything is working fine on the system so far but now that I bought this new Seagate HDD this doubt come up.
Could someone clarify these specifications for me please. I´m really confused.

Thanks.

 

[HammerBot]

I understand your confusion.
ATA100 or UDMA100 is really the same thing. I prefer to use the UDMA (Ultra DMA) term when referring to speed (e.g. UDMA100 or UDMA133) since ATA is the name of the interface (AT attachment).
If you have a drive with UDMA133 you will need an UDMA133 capable controller.

The <A HREF="http://www.asus.com.tw/mb/socketa/a7v133/overview.htm" target="_new">A7V133</A> has two controllers: A normal IDE controller and an IDE-RAID controllor. Each are only capable of UDMA100.
Your CDROM drives usually goes to the normal IDE controller, since most RAID controllers does not support the ATAPI interface of the CDROM drives.

The IBM drives shows up on the second screen and not on the first together with the CDROM, since you have connected the IBM drive to the RAID controller.

Im not sure whether you mobo can support your new UDMA133 drive since your mobo only has UDMA100. But try connecting it to the normal IDE connectors and see if the BIOS detecs the full capacity.

<i><b>Artificial intelligence will never be a match for natural stupidity</b></i>

 

[Napoleon]

The naming conventions are very confusing indeed. There are the ATA standard versions (e.g ATA-4), modes (e.g UDMA 2), transfer speeds (e.g ATA100, UDMA100), whatnot. Anyway, Seagate hosts a nice and concise <A HREF="http://www.seagate.com/training/ata/unit1/munitintro.html" target="_new">tutorial</A> explaining it all practically since day 0.

The tutorial doesn't cover Maxtor's UDMA/133. Said technology is Maxtor proprietary stuff that newer made it to the ATA specs. Other HD manufacturers haven't adopted it either as usage of UDMA/133 would require them to pay royalties to Maxtor, opting for SATA standard instead.

___
<font color=green><i>Feet are frozen, hair's on fire, on the average, everything's fine.</i></font color=green>

 

[Webwing]

Thanks for the replies. I read the history at Seagate site and few other articles. Things make a bit more sence now.
So it means that the difference between the two pairs of controlers in my MOBO is that one is RAID and the other is not?! Neither controler supports UDMA133 only 100 although my Seagate HD is 133. I'll have to live with that.
I connected my Seagate HD as slave to the IBM HD on the Raid controler and it is detected on the second screen. Everything works fine.
Then I connected both HD to the normal primary IDE connector and they show now on the first screen. When the second screen shows up it reads: Ultra100 Bios is not installed because there are no drives attached.
Windows starts up fine and both drives show up and run fine.
What is the difference then to connect the HD to the RAID connectors or to the normal IDE since I'm not using the RAID capability of the connector(one is 45gb and the other 40gb)? And what is this thing about Ultra100 Bios? Shouldnt it say something about RAID instead.
You might be wondering how I managed to assemble this computer without knowing all this stuff! The fact is everything is working fine only now that I got this new drive I found out that I misunderstud the use of this two pairs of IDE connectors.

thanks again

 

[HammerBot]

So it means that the difference between the two pairs of controlers in my MOBO is that one is RAID and the other is not?!

Yes.

What is the difference then to connect the HD to the RAID connectors or to the normal IDE

You connect them to another connector (Duh ) But other than that there is really no difference.

(one is 45gb and the other 40gb)?

It is possible to use RAID0 or RAID1 with different sized drives. But you will loose some space. In your case 5GB.

And what is this thing about Ultra100 Bios? Shouldnt it say something about RAID instead.

I dont know. Perhaps the RAID bios is called 'Ultra100' or something. Just ignore it.

One more thing. For best performance you should set both harddrives as master on separate IDE channels (on its own cable). If you also have a CDROM and/or DVD drive, I suggest you put your harddrives on the RAID controller and the CDROM drives on the normal IDE controller. This is because that most RAID controllers does not support ATAPI and hence cannot control CD/DVD drives.

<i><b>Artificial intelligence will never be a match for natural stupidity</b></i>

 

[Webwing]

Thanks to Napoleon and HammerBot for the answers.
Now things are a bit clearer in my head.
On the same topic - in my bios setup whenever it mentions the RAID connector it calls it the ATA drive and it calls the non Raid connector the IDE drive. I seems like a conspiracy of misinformation!

 

[camieabz]

Answered this one a while back. Easier to <A HREF="http://forumz.tomshardware.com/hardware/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&p=38509#38509" target="_new">link</A> it than to re-type it.

<b><font color=blue>~ <A HREF="http://www.btvillarin.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=324" target="_new">My System Specs</A> ~<font color=blue></b>

 

[HammerBot]

Nice work. Although its not entirely accurate, ATA-6 does not do UDMA133!


<i><b>"I don't understand what it is! Let me kill it!" -- Worf</b></i>

 

[camieabz]

So what's 133 classed as and what is classed as ATA-6?

<b><font color=blue>~ <A HREF="http://www.btvillarin.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=324" target="_new">My System Specs</A> ~<font color=blue></b>

 

[HammerBot]

UDMA133 is not part of the official ATA standard. UDMA133 is 'invented' my Maxtor as a marketing gimmick (i presume, since it has no real life importance).
ATA-6 has numerous addition compared to ATA-5. Most import is 48-bit LBA addressing to overcome the 128 GB size limitation.

<i><b>"I don't understand what it is! Let me kill it!" -- Worf</b></i>

 

[HammerBot]

BTW, You can download all the specifications here <A HREF="http://www.t13.org/" target="_new">http://www.t13.org/</A>
The committee is currently working on ATA-7

<i><b>"I don't understand what it is! Let me kill it!" -- Worf</b></i>

 

[camieabz]

ATA-6 has numerous addition compared to ATA-5. Most import is 48-bit LBA addressing to overcome the 128 GB size limitation.

Which I believe is present in UDMA-133 drives...

<b><font color=blue>~ <A HREF="http://www.btvillarin.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=324" target="_new">My System Specs</A> ~<font color=blue></b>

 

[HammerBot]

Yes, some form of increased LBA addressing is present, but im not sure if it uses the same commands as ATA-6. However, its a common misunderstanding that a drive has to be capable of UDMA133 in order to be larger than 128GB. This is not the case, which WD's 200GB drive (and other non-Maxtor 128+ GB drives) clearly shows. WD's 200GB drive uses UDMA100 and follows the official ATA standard.

<i><b>"I don't understand what it is! Let me kill it!" -- Worf</b></i>

 

[willyd]

if you udate to the newest bios from the asus web site you mobo will be udma133 although it probably will not make a difference in speed as for the raid connectors unless you go to raid they will only be extra ide connectors for harddrives only a benefit to this is putting all your devices on seperate ide channels which will speed up your system this is great if your using cdroms/cd-rw to copy on the fly as for ata/udma 133 for the end user the are essentially the same but systems nowadays don't even use the full potential of ata/udma 100 and there probably won't be any signifigant improvements to this type of interface ever since the industry is now gearing up for a new type of serial interface which probably will not be backwards compatible to ide anyway.
also, you can put two different drives together but you will only get double the size of the smallest drive using raid 0 "striping" which should increase hd speed slightly if using raid 1 "mirroring" which creates back-up drive you will only get the size of the smaller drive