Maxtor 160G any good?

[busmech1]

Does anybody have this drive? How does it compare to the WD120G as far as reliability? Your input wiuld be helpful. I'm considering one or the other.
thanks

 

[Adul]

you want space or speed? the 160 is all about space. maxtor is very reliable( exception of the occasional bad egg). Witht he 160 GB drive you will need to use the ATA 133 card, otherwise you wont relize the full 160GB of space. It is an at100 limitation that prevents 160GB drives from being recognized properly.

 

[busmech1]

Space is what I am looking for. I say this drive at CompUsa and the 133 controller card comes with it for $299.

 

[Rand]

Witht he 160 GB drive you will need to use the ATA 133 card, otherwise you wont relize the full 160GB of space. It is an at100 limitation that prevents 160GB drives from being recognized properly.

AH!!

Why oh why do people keep insisting that one needs ATA133 to see over 128GB??!!!!

ATA133 is definitely NOT needed to see over 128GB.
48bit LBA is needed to recognize and access capacities in excess of 128GB

The ATA133 standard natively incorporates support for 48bit LBA addressing, however 48bit LBA in and of itself is nothing new and has been obtainable for years. Previous IDE interface standards did not necessitate 48bit LBA to be compliant with the standard, that does not mean that it cannot be integrated.
There have been 48bit LBA enabled IDE controllers on the market for quite some time now, hell I've got an ATA66 IDE controller sitting about 10 feet from me that supports 48bit LBA and hence fully supports capacities in excess of 128GB.

There are MANY ATA100 controllers that support 48bit LBA, and a decent number of ATA66 controllers that do. While I don't know of any ATA33 controllers that support it offhand, I wouldnt be at all surprised if there were a handful.

Even Promise Technology, Inc... a relatively low quality IDE controller manufacturer has ATA100 IDE controllers that support 48bit LBA.

--Don't mind me, it's just a pet peeve of mine that ATA133 is so commonly believed to be necessary for 128GB+, just because it happens to natively support 48bit LBA.

 

[Adul]

Look at it this way rand.. It is pretty much garanteed you will have 48bit address support where as you are not sure if they have 48bit address support.

Bt thanks for that bit of info. Now if there was a list of what supports and what doesnt support 48bit address that would be helpful.

 

[John]

Nice post, Rand. I learned something new today.

 

[busmech1]

I didn't realize this thread was going to go this way. I have a question about the controller card. Is the card needed so the hard drive will run at the bus speed it is optimized for? I know it would work at on a ATA100 but it won't realize it's full potential am I understanding this right?
also thanks for all your input.
busmech

 

[John]

Short answer, no. IDE HDD's barely take advantage of the ATA66 standard.

 

[busmech1]

Then why do I need the controller?

 

[nortexoid]

ok, so u've missed the point of hte thread...

the ATA133 controller is "needed" so that your computer can recognize the entirety of the drive...otherwise it'll only format the first 128GB, which is a limitation of most ATA100 and less IDE controllers (but not because they're ATA100 as rand points out, but rather, because they may or may not incorporate 48bit LBA addressing )

so, if u want, pick up the drive first, check to see if your partition manager recognizes the entire drive and it's formatted accordingly, and if not, pick up an ATA133 controller.

or simply, buy the maxtor retail box drive that comes w/ the controller.

the drive isn't as fast as the 120gb WD, but it's still quite fast - after all, it only spins at 5400, but the platter density is large (though still the same as the WD one, AFAI - 40GB)...get it if u need the capacity and fairly decent performance, but not the best IDE performance.