What's the fastest IDE HD around?

MikeHunt79 · 18 Oct 2009 at 00:09

I'm looking at upgrading an old machine, right now it's running a 40GB HD, and Windows XP tends to chug a bit...

Would getting a newer HD speed things up a bit? I needs to be IDE as it's a P3 rig.

MagicBoy · 18 Oct 2009 at 00:13

How fast is the IDE controller?

Unless it's a UDMA66/100 then you're unlikely to see the benefit.

MikeHunt79 · 18 Oct 2009 at 00:20

MagicBoy said:
How fast is the IDE controller?

Unless it's a UDMA66/100 then you're unlikely to see the benefit.

It's using an 80 core cable right now, and I think it's ATA100... I won't be able to use the machine until tomorrow so I'l check then.

Caged · 18 Oct 2009 at 00:23

XP is going to chug on a P3, it's unlikely a new HDD will fix everything.

MagicBoy · 18 Oct 2009 at 00:28

80-wire means it's probably UDMA66.

First machine I had with UDMA100 was an 845 chipset P4.

A fast P3 (say 1GHz+) with 512Mb+ RAM should run XP OK. Just don't expect it to like Youtube or websites with lots of CPU wasting Flash content. Best upgrade I ever stuck in my old Dell P3 laptop was a 7200rpm HDD. Made more difference than doubling the RAM.

Sasahara · 18 Oct 2009 at 00:39

Buy a cheap PCI Sata controller card and get a sata drive.

Probably be able to get it both at the same price as an IDE drive.

Also if he ever upgrades, the drive will be worth keeping.

MikeHunt79 · 18 Oct 2009 at 01:19

I've already maxxed out the RAM (512mb), but I can't swap motherboards as XP is tied to the motherboard, and reinstalling windows is not an option.

Sasahara said:
Buy a cheap PCI Sata controller card and get a sata drive.

Probably be able to get it both at the same price as an IDE drive.

Also if he ever upgrades, the drive will be worth keeping.

While I've considered this option, I don't really know how well it will work... I already have a 320gb 7200.10 SATA drive I can use for testing.

1) Can I boot from a SATA drive, as the BIOS will not be able to see it

2) Won't I be restricted by the speed of the PCI bus? I'm not sure but I thought PCI slots are pretty old hat....

Also, I've heard of SATA-to-IDE adaptors, are these any good or are they worth avoiding? It needs to be reliable, as this machine will be on 24/7

Monkeynut · 18 Oct 2009 at 01:53

MikeHunt79 said:
I've already maxxed out the RAM (512mb), but I can't swap motherboards as XP is tied to the motherboard, and reinstalling windows is not an option.

While I've considered this option, I don't really know how well it will work... I already have a 320gb 7200.10 SATA drive I can use for testing.

1) Can I boot from a SATA drive, as the BIOS will not be able to see it

2) Won't I be restricted by the speed of the PCI bus? I'm not sure but I thought PCI slots are pretty old hat....

Also, I've heard of SATA-to-IDE adaptors, are these any good or are they worth avoiding? It needs to be reliable, as this machine will be on 24/7

I was using an adapter to get a IDE HDD working on a SATA board. It worked fine, I don't know if they work the other way around though.

MagicBoy · 18 Oct 2009 at 03:25

MikeHunt79 said:
1) Can I boot from a SATA drive, as the BIOS will not be able to see it

BIOS usually classes them as a SCSI adaptor, so set it to boot from SCSI before the onboard IDE. The SATA board will have it's own onboard BIOS to detect the drives.

2) Won't I be restricted by the speed of the PCI bus? I'm not sure but I thought PCI slots are pretty old hat....

PCI bus is 133 Megabytes/sec. It's shared between the devices, but it's not really a problem if the graphics are offloaded onto AGP.

Also, I've heard of SATA-to-IDE adaptors, are these any good or are they worth avoiding? It needs to be reliable, as this machine will be on 24/7

I'd expect no less reliable than early SATA disks - they used IDE controllers with an extra bridge chip to make them SATA. It's the other way around but essentially the same idea. I've got an external caddy that's natively IDE with a SATA bridge board if needed and that's been fine for about 3 years.

MikeHunt79 · 18 Oct 2009 at 10:49

MagicBoy said:
BIOS usually classes them as a SCSI adaptor, so set it to boot from SCSI before the onboard IDE. The SATA board will have it's own onboard BIOS to detect the drives.

PCI bus is 133 Megabytes/sec. It's shared between the devices, but it's not really a problem if the graphics are offloaded onto AGP.

Excellent, I'm using a PCI network card also, but I can't see this hogging too much bandwidth.

I think I'll try a controller card, if anything it may even be faster than the onboard controller.

oxygene · 18 Oct 2009 at 11:41

Yknow what you said about the xpbeing tied to the motherboard. I know you can change up to 3 hardware items before it complains and asks for a reinstall. How is it tied to that specific mobo?

MikeHunt79 · 18 Oct 2009 at 11:44

oxygene said:
Yknow what you said about the xpbeing tied to the motherboard. I know you can change up to 3 hardware items before it complains and asks for a reinstall. How is it tied to that specific mobo?

If I was to change the motherboard, then I'm sure it would exceed the 3 changes, as I'm using onboard GFX also.

oxygene · 18 Oct 2009 at 11:46

I was wondering if windows worked with cumulative changes or not. IE does it only complain if you change 3 items at once, or can you change 1, then another, then another.

MagicBoy · 18 Oct 2009 at 12:44

oxygene said:
Yknow what you said about the xpbeing tied to the motherboard. I know you can change up to 3 hardware items before it complains and asks for a reinstall. How is it tied to that specific mobo?

Everything hangs off the chipset. It would exceed three which means re-activating. Plus if it's an OEM license then it's breaking the T&C.