ATA 100 Hard Disk? (1 Viewer)

[Peter McDonald]

Hey Guys.

I recently bought a new computer and put my 60GB ATA 100 HDD in it. How can I tell if it's running @ ATA 100? (not ATA 33 or 66)

I've looked through the BIOS, and couldn't find anyting. (It's an "Award" BIOS BTW)

Peter

 

[MikeAlletto]

When you boot up and it lists your devices it should list your HD's. It should then list next to it what mode its in. I believe UDMA Mode 4 is ata100 and Mode 5 is ata133. I've got an ata133 card in my machine with an ata100 drive and an ata133 drive. The 100 drive is listed as mode 4 and the 133 is listed as mode 5 at bootup.

 

[Peter McDonald]

Thanks for the quick reply. When I restart though, it goes by so fast that I can't see it.

Any other ideas?

 

[Scott L]

What's your OS? XP and 2k automatically detect it and should run the highest mode by default (provided you have the thin 80-wire IDE cable). It gets trickier in Win98 but still easy.

 

[Peter-PP]

ATA 100 and ATA 133 are both mode 5. However, things will be changing beginning of next year, a new standard Serial ATA 150 has arrived. Some new motherboards already have the Serial ATAs and serial ATA HDDs are out as well.

 

[Daren Welsh]

A more brute-force solution would be to run some benchmark s/w and judge the bus speed based on the results.

 

[Peter McDonald]

The OS is XP Home.

Any ideas on a good benchmark programs for hard disks?

Peter

 

[Daren Welsh]

It's been a while since I used any bench s/w, but I had a free copy of SiSoft Sandra. I'm sure there are plenty of alternatives if you give google a whirl.

 

[DaveGTP]

As far as I understand, it should be running at the correct transfer speeds unless you either A) Used an older non-ATA66/100 IDE cable or b) your motherboard or HD doesn't support it (which can't be the case if they are both new). This isn't a setting that you have to turn on, it should be automatic. If you used the cable that came with it, and your board supports it, it should be running at the correct transfer rates.

 

[Ken Chan]

If you run a benchmark, it has to be one that specifically tests the buffer only.

Don't be suprised if you run a full benchmark, and it isn't even close to 66 MB/s sustained data transfer reading/writing the platters. So it really doesn't matter much if it's ATA/66 or ATA/100.

But then, if it's wrong, it will probably drop all the way to PIO mode (or even ATA/33), which is definitely too slow. If you get, say, 40 MB/s, you're probably OK.

//Ken

 

[Paul Spurgeon]

For winXP, access your Control Panel, then double-click the System icon.

Click the Hardware tab, then click the Device Manager.

Find the IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers icon, expand it, and open up the Primary IDE Channel Properties icon.

From there, click the Advanced Settings tab, and there is the information you are looking for.

Repeat this for your Secondary IDE Channel if you have one.

 

[Peter McDonald]

Thanks Paul. I found it