Ultra ATA/66 versus Ultra ATA/33 Comparison

The Test

The AnandTech storage test bed is currently set up using Windows 98, Windows NT 4.0 Service Pack 6 and Windows 2000. Each operating system is set up using its own 4 GB partition with Windows 98 using the Fat 32 file system, Win NT 4.0 using the NTFS file system and 2 instances of Windows 2000, one using the FAT 32 file system and the other using NTFS. Since Windows 2000 supports both file systems, we decided to set up two platforms to help compare the performance under both situations.

In all instances, the only installed software is the operating system and the benchmark programs. The test drive is being run as the "D:" Drive in all instances, operating as master on the secondary IDE channel. The operating system and all benchmark programs are contained on the boot disk, or the "C:" Drive, which operates as the master on the primary channel.

We followed the same procedures as we do for our normal hard drive testing, with the only difference being that we substituted a normal 40-connector cable for the Ultra ATA/33 tests.

The complete test bed is as follows:

· Intel Celeron 500 MHz CPU
· Intel CA810E motherboard with native Ultra ATA/66 support
· 128 MB Corsair PC100 SDRAM
· Ultra ATA/66 40-pin, 80-conductor HDD cable
· Microsoft Windows 98
· Microsoft Windows NT 4.0 SP6
· Microsoft Windows 2000 (FAT 32)
· Microsoft Windows 2000 (NTFS)
· Ziff Davis Winstone 2000 CC
· Ziff Davis Winstone 99
· Ziff Davis Winbench 99
· Adaptec Threadmark 2 (Windows 98 and NT4 only)

Each hard disk was partitioned and formatted before each suite of tests on their respective operating systems, as to prevent any skewing of the test results. For purposes of consistency, each benchmark was run a total of 5 times, with the final score being the average of those five runs. The machine was rebooted between each test as to minimize the effects of any carryover from the previous tests.