Re: Westerm Digital 160 MB

Mon, 29 Nov 2004 12:03:30 -0800 

Hi Terry,

Thanks to you too, for the clarifying for me IDE and ATA.

I've hand lingering suspicions about what and how these technologies work with one another. Now I know, thanks to you.

Cheers,

Bill

At 11:38 AM -0800 29/11/2004, Terry Graham wrote: 
Thanks much Bill,

Here's more from a site I found last week:

IDE
Integrated Drive Electronics (IDE) refers to any drive with the controller built-in. The interface most of us use, that we call IDE, is actually called ATA, or AT Attachment. Most drives today are IDE. Because the controller is on the drive itself less parts are needed and the signal pathways can be much shorter resulting in improved reliability of the drive. Integrating the controller is easier for the manufacturer because they do not have to worry about complying with another manufacturer's controller. Each drive is an independent entity.

ATA IDE
This is the most popular IDE form. CDC, Compaq, and Western Digital were the first to create the interface. They also decided to use the 40-pin connector. They were large drives of the 5.25" form, but were only 40MB. They were used in the early Compaq 386 systems, using WD controllers. Later, Compaq founded Conner. Conner produced drives for Compaq, but was later sold.

In the late 1980's, the ATA IDE was set as ANSI standard. This caused all manufacturer's to agree with a common design for the interface. Before this was done, many companies had produced their own variations. This sometimes makes it hard for us to make these older drives work with newer ones in the same system. Some areas of the ATA standard were left open to manufacturer's for their own commands so the standard is quite loosely set.

At 1:33 PM -0500 11/29/04, Bill Taylor's wrote: 
Hi Terry,

Yes, I can see how that message might seem cryptic

From what I can figure, the first part of Herman's message quotes some of the parameters or operating requirements for a specific model of drive, made by a company called Western Digital. You can get such info from their web site.

This is a type of drive that Apple's been using in their machines for a number of years now, called IDE. Where as before they were using a more expensive type called SCSI [small computer system interface] .

There are different interfaces, or means by which the which the computer controls the hard drive. This is done by the ATA card [not sure what that translates as?].

Over the years faster versions of ATA controllers have some out. At first, there was something like ATA 33, then ATA 66, then I think ATA 100, and presently ATA 133. In addition to the speed that these controller cards perform at, they also recognize larger capacity hard drives.

So by referring to the specific model of Starmax computer, and assuming his computer has one of these type of ATA controllers I mentioned, it seems to me he's trying to confirm that his computer will recognize the drive's full capacity. I know from experience, that my Starmax 3000/160 will recognize and work with a 120 Giga Byte drive.

There is one tradeoff, however, and that is that the drive is capable of transferring data at a hirer speeds than the ATA controller can manage. With such a setup, you don't have to worry about loosing data, it's just that there's a speed bottleneck at the ATA controller card. Although new drives don't necessarily come slow enough to meet the speed of older ATA controller cards, you can however install a faster ATA controller card using an available PCI slot in your machine to bypass this bottleneck.

For such a card, you can turn to companies like Sonnet Technologies who make such 3rd party cards.

For anyone else, if my understanding of all this as stated here is in someway incorrect, then please advise.

Thanks,

Bill



At 10:06 AM -0800 29/11/2004, Terry Graham wrote:
>Hermann Ertl wrote: 
Westerm Digital 160 MB, WD1600JBRTL.

Under System Requirements it says:
>>>>For hard drives larger than 137 MB: 
   Mac OS X v10.2 or later,
   Mac G4

Will it not work in a StarMax 3240, OS 8.1 (8.6)? 
Or does this mean that only 137 MB will be usable?
__________________________________

Hi Folks,

Would someone please tell me what the above initial post even means!
It is driving me nuts!  :-)

First a Western Digital drive is mentioned,
then comes "system requirements". . . FOR WHAT?

WHAT IS IS THAT REQUIRES A DRIVE LARGER THAN 137MB??

I mean it looks like the Drive requirements listed for a DRIVE
which makes no sense to me.

The whole thing is Greek to me, the way it is written.

Help!

Thanks,
Terry


At 12:07 PM -0500 11/29/04, Bill Taylor's wrote:
At 10:44 PM -0500 28/11/2004, Hermann Ertl wrote: 
Westerm Digital 160 MB, WD1600JBRTL.

Under System Requirements it says:
For hard drives larger than 137 MB:
   Mac OS X v10.2 or later,
   Mac G4

Will it not work in a StarMax 3240, OS 8.1 (8.6)?
Or does this mean that only 137 MB will be usable?


Hi Herman,

The other option available to you is to add a ATA controller card in one of your machines' remaining PCI slots.

I found a variety of options available from the Sonnet Technologies site, that I accessed from Apple's site. I figured Apple recommends their 3rd party products by maintaining this link. Here's teh link to the Sonnect Tech site:

http://www.sonnettech.com/product/pci_adptrs.html

... and to think that I don't even work for the company. Although it would be nice if they threw a few dollars my way for recommendation such as this.

Cheers,

Bill


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