I am not real well versed in computers. But I am learning. I just bought a Maxtor ultra dma/133 120gb drive and can't get it to work. Something tells me that my motherboard may not support 133. Can someone tell me if this is true and how I can find out what the motherboard is and will support. Please.

have you got the manual?? that would be the place. if not do you know what motherboard you have? you could check out the manufacturers website maybe email them.

For an ATA133 to work properly, you will need an 80-wire IDE-cable. It won't work with a standard 40-wire cable.

Even if your mobo does not support 133, but let's say 100, that HD should work then at 100.

If you are adding it to your system you may have to change the drive select jumpers on the drive. Depends on what you connected it too. The hard drive you have your OS on is the Primary master, any drive connected to the same cable will have to be set up as slave. You will have to setup your partitions and formate it too. If you are using xp or 2k go to disk management to add it to your system and formate it. As mentioned to get the full ATA 133 speed you need an 80 wire 40 pin cable. Just watch the screen while your PC boots up. If you see a warning that no 80 wire cable detected then you may need to buy one. My system came with one on the Primary IDE channel, but my secondary channel just had a 40 wire cable. That was all that was needed for my cr-roms. MY mother board only supports ATA100 but by ATA133 Maxtor still works, just at a slower transfer rate. If this is a fresh install you need to install the busmaster drivers, mother board drivers, to get ATA speeds. Hope this helps.

You need the right gauged wires as mentioned if you mobo doesn't support ATA133 then it should either run at ATA100. In either case it should work.

I'd also check your system bios to see if the channel you have connected the drive to is enabled (also a good place to see if the drive is detected and operating properly). The only other thing I can think of that could go wrong is the cable orientation. Not too likely nowadays with the notches in the connectors but worth a look.

hi since this is the topic on this thread i was wondering what the hell my motherboards manual means when it lists ints hdd interface at dma 133...does that mean me buying a ata133 hdd os ok?...i also have Sata support..but i dont know the difference or how hard it will be to mess with,i'm thinking of getting either a 160 or 180gb drive could be sata or what ever the hell works with my asus p4g8x mobo,someone please help me figure out what drive i should get,i was eyeing those samsung hdds,they seem great.

If your motherboard supports ATA133 then it means it will work with any ATA/IDE device manufacturd since the eighties when the standard was taken up.

SATA (serial ATA) is a new standard that ismincompatible with the old one.

If you want ease of use, maximum performance (Raptors are only SATA) and live in the future then go and buy the SATA hard drive.

If you want compatibility (e.g. use the HD in some older computer) get an ATA133 drive.

...so dma 133 means my mobo supports ata 100 and ata133?



please if you can,clarify what this means to me on purchasing a new hard drive,heres some specs i got from the asus site

IDE 2 x UltraDMA 100 / 66 / 33
Serial ATA Silicon Image 3112A controller supports two Serial ATA ports
RAID RAID 0 or RAID 1 support by two Serial ATA connectors


i'm very unclear on the meaning and differences in these numbers...sorry for the trouble.

Your motherboard supports all ATA/IDE devices. ATA133 devices will work at ATA100 speed (this does not mean a performance loss really).

You can also attach up to 2 serial ATA devices. You can configure the SATA controller to treat the 2 SATA drives as a RAID0 or a RAID1 array if you like.

cool now i get the firstt part,but what about that raid business,whats that about? is it worth it...whhat is it and what are its benefits cause everyone seems to mention it..i'm not sure what kind of hd to buy

RAID.edu
I just setup raid 0 on my PC, I wanted the extra speed. I used a Silicon Image SIL680 ATA133 PCI raid card and two identical 80 gig Maxtor's.

well after checking out that link i don't think i need a raid setup at all,all i need is a decent 200 gb,after losing my 80gb maxtor full of goodness...what a tragedy...i'm only left with a measly WD 10gb and WD 40gb both old and still goin strong surprisingly..since alot of WD reviews seem terrible,while maxtors
(which i've had several bad experiences with) get great reviews

the 80 GB dead maxtor makes funny clicking noises and wont let any other drives show up when its connected
even if its set as slave and another is at master,it stopped working after i took a 2 month vacation where the pc was off that long

i was wondering if theres any place i can go to possibly recover the data on that drive,i had over 130 playstation 1 games backed up and archived on there,among my own work and projects.

i'm thinkin of getting a samsung or IBM/Hitachir 180gb SATA drive..unless that will require me to use taht raid configuration

is the extra 10 dollars worth SATA features?..its faster right?

To Take it somewhere for data recovery is expen$ive. I have never tried it but have seen lots of posts saying it worked, the freezer trick that is. Put the bad drive in a ziplock bag and put it in the freezer for a few hours. Take it out and put it into a pc, and hope you can copy the data before it quits again. My system came with a Quantum 40 gig, it's in my daughters PC now. I have two 80 gig Maxtors in mine now. They're identical but weren't bought at the same time. No problems so far. I've seen a lot of posts about WD drives clicking and dying. I've used a lot of they're older smaller drives 1 gig and lower, no problems. I think they're just trying to bring the big drives out without testing them long enough.