ATA Backwards Compatibility?

Arainach

Google goes both ways on this, so I'm hoping for someone with Direct Experience:

I just got an ATA/100 RAID Card (Thanks Vash) that I intend to use when turning this machine into a Massive Linux RAID Fileserver. What I'm curious about is if ATA/133 Hard Drives will work on an ATA/100 Controller - obviously not at full speeds, but will they run? 250GB/300GB ATA100 drives aren't exactly the most common variety.

Duke3d87

yes they will. Shoot, I have a SATA converter on my RAID 0. So you'll be fine.

lydaan

yeah, its backward compatible, so it will work.

Arainach

Sweet, many thanks.

DaemonDraxx

I'm glad you said ATA controller CARD because it should work. If it was an onboard controller I would have to warn you about a maximum capacity read barrier. My server has problems reading large drives with a capacity of 30GB+.

Arainach

30GB+? Christ, is that ATA33?

DaemonDraxx

Hmmm let me check...o.O


Yeah it is.
I had hell when my ST3660A died and bought an 80GB Maxtor. o_O

NortHWizarD

I have a highpoint Rocket 133 IDE controller card (PCI) if anyone wants it... brand new.. just the card though... no drivers... if any are even needed, but could get them online from the manufacturers website.

if anyone is interested, let me know... this thread just reminded me that i have it LOL

~NortH~

Duke3d87

Depends. I have a 30 GB WD HD that is a 7200 RPM ATA 100 HD.

DaemonDraxx

WTF GG D00D!
The fastest drive that has ever been in this machine is 5400RPM. My SATA isn't about to go in here and neither is a 2800RPM disk that I used to put Win2K on. Only fast parts to boot and serve with. Now if I could get my hands on an AMD K6-2/550, I'd be rocking out with SQL Server 2005!
Have you ever tried loading a page from a server that uses a 2800RPM drive? It needs that extra push. =/

Arainach

That actually is a Maxtor issue. I love the company to death, but their ATA100/133 implementation is NOT backwards compatible to ATA33/66 controllers. I don't think other companies have issues.

DaemonDraxx

lolololololololol
It sucked sooo bad going from a Seagate to Maxtor. My computer wouldn't even accept the drive size when scanning and it would often hang after loading the IRQ listing screen. The next garbage was that the drive wasn't formatted. Now remember...This is a time when all I had was Windows 95! I had to boot MaxBlast +II with a floppy and then a CD. I have no idea whay they couldn't make bootable CDs. O_o In short I finally figured out how to format the drive(it wanted Win95 bootdisk data...that pissed me off). Later this EZ-BIOS thing got in the way when I wanted to boot partition magic. O_o I uninstalled EZ-BIOS and got past it. When I wanted to do a low-level format, that's when it was a real bitch. MaxBlast would gripe at me when selecting the disk with a huge list of broken code and an infinite beep error that reminded me of my Seagate crashing. x.x'

Somehow this little box runs today with Windows Server 2003. O_o

*checks*
With 81 days uptime. o_O

skeeder

you should of IM'ed me...I woulda told you that...ATA will run at the slowest speed on the bus so if you have a drive at 133 and another at 100. both will run at 100.

dubloe7

btw, a single hard drive (EDIT, 7200rpm) wont even fully saturate a 66mb/s line, so unless you might notice a slight decrease if its a 8m + of cache, but not much.

DaemonDraxx

That's why I only keep 5400RPM drives in my server and nothing else!
Performance is a real key when making a reliable rig. I've taken all the bad complications and eliminated as many bottlenecks as possible. End result....

Currently 83 days uptime...o_O

dubloe7

but hot swappable sata drives make the possibility of a longer uptime greater. at least if you use raid5.

DaemonDraxx

Are you a foo? o_O
SATA doesn't go in my server! >.<'
Oh yeah...The more drives I put in here, the less stable it gets since a drive is a device that takes up more resources.