Ultra ATA/66 versus Ultra ATA/33 Comparison
by Scott Gooden on May 16, 2000 12:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Storage
The Drives
We picked three of the top performing 7200-RPM, Ultra ATA/66 drives that we used in recent testing and ran them through a series of tests, first using the 80-conductor Ultra ATA/66 cable, then again using the standard 40-conductor IDE cable. The use of a 40-conductor IDE cable reverts the Ultra ATA/66 controller to Ultra ATA/33 speeds, as the presence detect conductor in the cable is not broken. It is this broken (or open) signal that the controller looks for, to determine if the proper Ultra ATA/66 cable is being used. If it fails to detect this signal, it automatically reverts to Ultra ATA/33 speeds.
The three drives that we used in this comparison are:
Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 40 (52049U4)
Seagate Barracuda ATA 28.5 GB (ST328040A)
Western Digital Expert 27.3 GB (WD273BA)
|
The Drives |
||||
|
Drive |
Rotational Speed |
Cache |
Seek Time |
Capacity |
|
Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 40 |
7200 RPM |
2 MB |
< 9ms |
20.4GB |
|
Seagate Barracuda ATA |
7200 RPM |
512 KB |
8 ms |
28.5GB |
|
WD Expert WD273BA |
7200 RPM |
2 MB |
9 ms |
27.3GB |
While the results for the Ultra ATA/66 tests are the same as in our recent reviews, this discussion is not about determining the best performing drive. It is meant to illustrate any differences between using the same drive under Ultra ATA/33 or Ultra ATA/66 modes. We just wanted to include a few different drives in the testing to help even out inconsistencies and draw firmer conclusions from the resulting data.
If you want more information about any of the drives used in this comparison, please refer to the March 2000 roundup or the Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 40 review.
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