Mailinglist Archive: opensuse (3222 mails)

[Rik.Dunphy@xxxxxxxxxxxx (Dunphy Richard-rdunph01)]

> > Today I submitted my requirements to the dealer who will put
> > together my computer. The only problem the dealer has is that
> > he doesn't think he can obtain a Western Digital DMA33 drive,
> > only a DMA66. I read somewhere that by using the standard
> > cable for EIDE drives with a DMA33 drive you would get the
> > slower speed . Is this also true for DMA66 drives? Are DMA66
> > drives backward compatible with EIDE drives? I am not
> > interested in faster speeds as I do not use linux to play
> > games.
> 
> They are backwards compatible. You can savely use a UDMA 66
> drive with a UDMA 33 controller. Plus UDMA 66 drives are
> certainly not faster than UDMA 33 drives. Even fast HDs cannot
> deliver 33 MByte/s maximum transfer rate so a UDMA 33 controller
> does not slow things down.

UDMA66 drives on a UDMA66 controller are faster when doing large transfers.
If your not doing a large file transfer (say about 20Mb) you probably won't
notice the difference anyway!

One point to note is that UDMA33 drives typcially have 512K of cache while
most UDMA66 drives have 2Mb. This can make a huge difference in performance
whether in 33 or 66 mode. So make sure you do get the 2Mb of cache

RikD


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