How can I tell what ATA my hard drive supports?

[Celeborn]

I have 2 hard drives in my computer atm... one fairly recent one, and one older one (around 3 years old I guess). I have a new mothermoard which i know supports ATA 66 ... and i'm going to get a new 20gb hard drive which is ATA100 compatable. The problem is that I also have a DVD drive and CD Rom drive on one IDE cable... so only have one cable free.... and I know that if 2 devices are on the same cable... the speed will only be of the slower device. So is there anyway to find out what ATA this older hard drive supports without taking my computer apart? It's 6gb big... so it's a fair bit of space thats worth keeping if possible... but if it's gonna slow down my computer....

 

[Celeborn]

hmmm just reatarted and checked the boot screen and for the older had drive is says DMA mode 2 and for the newer one DMA mode 4 .. what does this mean? and also what is S.M.A.R.T mode? thanks hehe

 

[Guest]

take a look at www.maxtor.com

Is there a faq somewhere around here? *chuckle*

Q01: What is Ultra DMA?

A01: Ultra DMA (UDMA) is the latest advancement to the ANSI ATA specifications. For detailed information about the ANSI ATA specifications view them at the T13 Committee site at http://www.t13.org/. ATA-4, among other improvements, supports Ultra DMA modes 0, 1 and 2. UDMA mode 2 supports burst data transfer rates up to 33 MB per second (MB/s). ATA-5, among other improvements, supports Ultra DMA modes 3 and 4. UDMA mode 4 supports burst data transfer rates up to 66 MB/s.
Maxtor drives that support UDMA will have an "D" (supports UDMA mode 2, 33 MB/s data transfer rate) or an "U" (supports UDMA mode 4, 66 MB/s data transfer rate) designator in the drive model number instead of the traditional "A". For example: Model 91728D8 (UDMA/33 MB/s), model 91728U8 (UDMA/66 MB/s).


ATA-5 Extensions Synchronous DMA Mode for Ultra DMA

Mode Cycle Times Transfer Rate (Burst)
01 120 ns 16.6 MB/s
1 80 ns 25 MB/s
2 60 ns 33.3 MB/s
3 45 ns 44.4 MB/s
4 30 ns 66.6 MB/s

1 - Equivalent to PIO mode 4 (ATA-3)


UDMA/33 (ATA-4) doubles and UDMA/66 (ATA-5) quadruples the maximum transfer speed of the ATA-3 interface while maintaining the cycle time of the ATA bus clock at the rate used by PIO Mode 4.



S.M.A.R.T.
Self-Monitoring Analysis and Reporting Technology

What is S.M.A.R.T.?
S.M.A.R.T. is a system that enables the PC to predict the future failure of devices such as disk drives. Armed with a failure prediction, the user or system manager can back up key data, replace a suspect device prior to data loss, or avoid undesired downtime. S.M.A.R.T. is a key component of improving data integrity and data availability of the PC.


-note that it has been known to degrade performance ever so slightly. -hawkeye


Never cut what you can untie. -Joubert (1754-1824)