Why Buy an
Ultra ATA133 EIDE Hard Drive?

The ultra ATA133 EIDE hard drive is the fastest hard drive for the parallel ATA bus. Reaching speeds of 133 MBytes/sec, it is nearly as fast as the SATA 150 hard drive. A slightly slower version, that can do 100 MBytes/sec (ATA100), is still available from most of the hard drive manufacturers. The advantage of these drives is that they are still compatible with huge base of older hardware. Even if your old computer only has an ATA66 controller, you can still use a newer ATA133 hard drive. Of course, the drive will be limited to the slower speed, but at least you can keep your older hardware running.

Even though the ATA133 is the end of the technological line for parallel ATA, there are still good reasons for purchasing one of these drives for use in a new computer. One reason might be to add extra drives to a newer desktop where all the SATA connectors are already in use. Another reason might be that you want to use an old drive that would otherwise be collecting dust. Most newer motherboards support the 40-pin parallel IDE connectors, and plugging an old drive into it that connector is a cost effective way to get more disk space.

Besides the transfer rate, there are two other factors that affect hard drive performance. These are hard drive RPM and cache buffer size.

RPM stands for Revolutions Per Minute. It tells how fast the hard drive platter is spinning. The faster it spins, the quicker your data can be read from the disk. Unfortunately, there is a downside in that a high RPM drive makes more noise, requires more power, and generates more heat. If you want good performance, look for a 7200 RPM drive.

The drive cache is a memory buffer on the hard drive unit. It temporarily stores data before it is transferred to the CPU. This temporary storage helps to improve the sustained read speeds of large blocks of data. The cache size should be proportional to the hard drive size. A small 40GB hard drive can get away with a 2MB cache be a larger 160GB hard drive should have an 8MB cache.

The distinctive feature of the parallel ATA interface is the wide ribbon cable used to connect the hard drives. Each ribbon cable can hold two eide hard drives. One drive is designated as the master and the other drive is designated as the slave. Jumper settings on the drive set the hard disk for either master or slave mode. If you are having trouble getting two drives to work on a single parallel ATA cable, make sure that only one ultra ata133 eide hard drive is set to the master mode.

If speed is the most important issue, and you have a spare SATA connector on your motherboard, then you are better off going with a SATA drive. A SATA 300 hard drive can reach speeds of 300 MB/s, which is considerably faster than ATA133 hard drive. However, if speed is not your primary concern, don't ignore a bargain ultra ATA133 EIDE hard drive sale.

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