IDE UDMA 33/66 and Hard Drive

james1234

I'm looking for a new hard drive, but before I go purchasing I'm trying to find out what I can actually stick on the mobo.

From the following specs is there anyone out there who could tell me what type of HDD I could add on?

Chipset:
Via KT133 FSB 200Mhz
Via VT686A
IDE Controller with PIO, Bus Master, Ultra DMA 33/66

I know it's not the newest fastest thing in the world, but I really only need to expand on storage space, but all I can find out there regards specs for new drives is (E)IDE/ATA 100 or 133, haven't seen any 33/66, I guess they're becoming obsolete... :rolleyes:

Should I be looking for a drive with specs of IDE/ATA/UDMA 33/66 and not 100/133. Would those with the higher specs even run at all on this mobo? If not I really guess I can only look for 2nd hand drives, from what seems to be on offer these days... :eek:

Appreciating any wisdom that comes my way!

SouperComputer

ata33 is fine, just get a 80 connector ultra cable to avail of ATA66 which is much nicer than 33 with modern drives.

IDE is usually backwards compatible, so youll be fine.

james1234

Thanks Souper!

So there's no probs buying say a 160GB ATA 100 or 133 drive, so long as I get an Ultra cable I can avail of the UDMA66 also.

Grand, there was me thinkin' I'd have to fork out another coupla hundred loolaas for a new mobo and RAM, whew!!!

SouperComputer

well, that depends on the mobo. It has to support 48Bit LBA for the larger drives. Have a look in the manufacturers website. You might need a mobo BIOS update

80Gb should be fine, 160 may be a problem. If it comes to the worst, you can get a PCI ATA or SATA card and have no worries at it has its own BIOS to identify the HD's

james1234

Yea, that's the problem, no details on the manufacturers website as the mobo is so old... (3 years old is aeons in the PC world, unfortunately!) :mad:
The next model up does support it, but that has UDMS33/66 & 100, but not mine. Guess I gotta give them a phone call :-( (no UK website, only an american no.)

If you're interested, my mobo is an MSI K7T Pro2 (MS6330) but NOT a Turbo, which is all they have on their website.

If anyone out there has the same, and successfully added a 160GB drive, I'd love to know.

Cheers,
James

zilog_jones

It's not the ATA speed that's the problem, it's if it has 48Bit LBA support. Your motherboard may not be able to handle hard disks larger than 132GB (or some number like that). If that is the case, and you can't get (or already have) the latest BIOS update (or it doesn't fix this problem anyway), you can always get an IDE controller card (from about €20) which should solve that problem.

RicardoSmith

if you end up buying a controller. Buy a SATA/UATA controller. Be more useful in the future. Some also have USB2 and FW ports on them aswell. But the more on it the more expensive it will be. Food for thought, even if funds don't allow it. Maplins do a few of them. But its pretty much a sure thing it would be cheaper online somewhere.

james1234

Thanks all for the feedback!

Still waiting to hear back from MSI, rang their american tech support line, was on hold for about 5 mins, then got to leave a voicemail, great!!!!

Still no news, also sent in an email request on their website, still no response either

If the board is not 48bit LBA compliant (fingers crossed it is - as other newer members of this mobo family are, from what I can determine on the website) then I guess I might just go for a smaller drive, don't really have much space for another pci card...

I recently noticed that nearly all my pci cards (5 in total) were all using the same IRQ (IRQ11) - while troubleshooting dodgy s/w DVD playback. So I wouldn't be too keen on having to disable something else to be able to put in a PCI SATA/UATA controller, but sounds like a good idea, with extra USB and Firewire too

As I've had this mobo for quite some time, I think I'll just go with the smaller HDD if needs be, andupgrade whenever this mobo packs it in, which I hope will not be for a long time... :rolleyes:

RicardoSmith

You can always just stick the hard drive in an external USB2 or FW box if you're that stuck.

swiss

If you're running Windows 2000 or XP, there is a registry patch to enable support for hard drives over 137Gb

http://www.maxtor.com/en/support/downloads/big_drive_enabler.htm

However, if your BIOS doesn't support this it could be useless to you. However, I believe there is a workaround. Say if you do buy a 160Gb hard drive but do not have 48bit LBA on your motherboard BIOS, you should be able to format the drive into two 80Gb partitions. Since each logical partition is obviously less than 137Gb, you shouldn't have any problems with LBA support.

I haven't tried this solution myself, since I bought an IDE controller card for my larger hard drives. You could do the same thing for a solution that will work. A 2 channel UDMA IDE controller card will probably cost around €35 - €40 on komplett.