Quantum Fireball CR 8.4B HDD
Review
With the recent press release from ABit about their Hot Rod ATA/100 hard disk
controller, one would have expected to see ATA/100 capable drives on the market.
As it stands right now, not even the fastest ATA/66 drives are able to exploit
the ATA/66 interface to its fullest extent. This is a proper indication of how
slowly hard disk technology evolves as compared to the actual hard disk
interface. You could say that this is somewhat similar to the gap between CPU
speeds and their respective front side buses.
Current 800MHz+ "Coppermine's" officially still run on a 133MHz FSB although
many motherboard manufacturers are offering unofficial support for FSB's of
155MHz+.
I
am not trying to say that the Hot Rod ATA/100 is an eyewash, certainly not! In
fact, the introduction of this controller card only encourages the pushing of
this standard. Surely we will see ATA/100 drives on the market, but the question
of exactly when belongs in the hands of hard disk manufacturers. Till then, Viva
ATA/66!
One of the makers of
ATA/66 drives is none other than Quantum Corporation. After all, it was Quantum
who had developed the ATA/66 standard and the ATA/33 standard before it. In the
meantime, Quantum has been licensing the technology out to others so that they
may boast of ATA/66 compliance and to ensure industry standardization. Otherwise
known as Ultra ATA/66, this technology doubles the effective external hard disk
transfer rates from the ATA/33 standard. With continued growth in hard disk size
and faster rotational speeds, internal transfer rates also went up.
It was foreseen that in 1999, a bottleneck
would be reached with the ATA/33 interface. So the ATA/66 standard was
implemented to improve the interface and keep up with the internal data transfer
rates and will be a cushion for further increases in internal transfer rates for
around a couple of more years until these rates begin to exceed 66MB/sec and
hence have the need for the ATA/100 interface.
Some content here may
resemble the Quantum Fireball CX
13.0GB review. That is because of a lot of
the features and characteristics do remain the
same.
Requirements
In order to utilize the potential of ATA/66, there are a few
things that you will need. Firstly, you will need either a motherboard or an
add on controller card that supports the ATA/66 protocol. Older motherboards based upon the Intel BX
and LX chipsets do not support this option. If your current system runs on these chipsets,
you will have to make use of an add on controller card as mentioned
above if you want to take advantage of ATA/66.
Quite a number of non Intel chipset based
motherboards do support ATA/66. Secondly, you will require a 40-pin,
80-conductor cable to set your hard drive running at 66MB/sec. The reason for
this is that this new type of cable increases data integrity and reduces
crosstalk. Crosstalk is a phenomenon that occurs when signals leak in to
adjacent conductors. Within this newer type of cable, 40 extra ground wires are
added to help protect against crosstalk. But don't worry, these new cables are
plug compatible with existing connectors.
ATA/66 drives are
backward compatible so that you may use them on non ATA/66 compliant
motherboards. Of course, you will be operating at ATA/33 (provided your board
supports it) speeds. Lastly (and probably most obviously), you will require an
ATA/66 capable hard disk drive. Software wise, if your current OS supports
ATA/33 transfers, then you can be sure that it will support ATA/66 as
well.
If you do not have a board which supports ATA/66, don't
worry. This drive will work on current ATA/33 (and earlier) boards. Simply use
your current 40-pin, 40-conductor cable and you set to go. A utility from
Quantum is there where you can disable the ATA/66 feature of the drive to force
it to run in ATA/33 mode. You can use this utility if needed, but from what I
have seen, this drive works fine without it. Of course, you can always purchase
an ATA/66 hard disk controller from manufacturers such as ABit or
Promise.
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