Without delving into the differences too much, ATA tends to refer to the speed at which the drive can communicate with the motherboard, and IDE is the type of drive. From your description You definitely have an IDE drive connector on your board - the other current alternative anre SCSI and serial ATA which are a whole different ballgame. Most drives now support ATA100 which is an indicator of the transfer speed assuming your cable is good enough and your motherboard supports it. They're all backwards compatible though, and as a result you'll find you'll have trouble buying anything slower anyway :)
Things to consider:
1. You will need to jumper your current drive to master and the new one to slave. Having said that, if the new drive is faster and larger it can be worth using that as the primary one. his does involve mucking around with transferring the data though, so I wouldn't worry too much about that.
2. You'll need to make sure you have an 80 strand IDE cable from your drives to the motherboard to ensure the best performance. Compare the IDE cable to the floppy drive cable - if the strands look to be of a similar width, then you have a 40 strand. The drive will still work with this but not as effectively - it'll just run at speeds associated with ATA33 drives instead.
3. Remember that if you have your current drive partitioned, your drive letters will get mixed up when you format the new one. You can avoid this by creating an extended partition ONLY on the secondary drive rather than a primary. This will maintain the drive letter sequence, but won't affect the performance.
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Further to Kuang's posting:
ATA
Short for Advanced Technology Attachment, a disk drive implementation that integrates the controller on the disk drive itself. There are several versions of ATA, all developed by the Small Form Factor (SFF) Committee:
ATA: Known also as IDE, supports one or two hard drives, a 16-bit interface and PIO modes 0, 1 and 2.
ATA-2: Supports faster PIO modes (3 and 4) and multiword DMA modes (1 and 2). Also supports logical block addressing (LBA) and block transfers. ATA-2 is marketed as Fast ATA and Enhanced IDE (EIDE).
ATA-3: Minor revision to ATA-2.
Ultra-ATA: Also called Ultra-DMA, ATA-33, and DMA-33, supports multiword DMA mode 3 running at 33 MBps.
ATA/66: A version of ATA proposed by Quantum Corporation, and supported by Intel, that doubles ATA's throughput to 66 MBps.
ATA/100: An updated version of ATA/66 that increases data transfer rates to 100 MBps.
ATA also is called Parallel ATA. Contrast with Serial ATA.
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Stuart - you definitely need to get out more.
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No, you need to stay right here and answer all our questions!
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>>Stuart - you definitely need to get out more.>>
Oh really? Probably get out more than you...:-)
I do at least 20 miles a week with the dog for a start, there's a minumum of three visits a week for a pint (?) of Guinness (mile long walk each way to my club), chauffeur the other half for two hours or so on shopping trips at least twice a week, drive around a large area of Merseyside and Lancashire on an almost daily basis, plus.....
Need I go on...:-)))
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Kuang,
thanks.
I have no partitions so no problem there. My intention is to transfer my Op system (XP) and possibly other data to my new faster drive and switch Master/slave etc, using Norton Ghost. As you cant backup or restore to/from the same disk, Im hoping to create disk A image on disk B, then copy image onto disk A, and restore to disk B. Then change disk B to master. Does this sound OK?
Ideally, I would have XP on a seperate partition to the rest of my data (to simplify Ops system backups - Im on dial-up) - is it possible to transfer XP to its own partition without uninstalling all my other applications?
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Ooops, misunderstood the concept of Ghost. Mirroring, and not imaging the drive will simplify things.
Andy
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Ghost will allow you to do a direct image from one disk to another rather than producing image files as an intermediate stage - choose Local > Disk > to Disk. That'll duplicate the entire drive across to the new one a lot faster than using images and sort out unused space for you so the partition fills the whole drive correctly. You can then switch the master and slave settings as required.
Unfortunately when you install applications into a windows system, windows keeps track of where they're located and stores a lot of information in the registry to that effect. Moving an application or the windows directory generally has catastrophic results. Some apps will run, but the vast majority will throw a hissy fit of mammoth proportions.
Your two best options as I see them would be as follows:
1. Partition the new drive into OS and Data sections (or even OS, Apps and Data). Copy your personal files over to the data section, and then reinstall the OS and apps into the other two. The benefit would be a clean system, but you'd have a lot of work to do to get it back up to the level it was previously at. You might have to re-update the OS and patch applications where needed, and you'd also have to transfer internet and email settings over to the new install.
2. Partition the new drive as you see fit. Ghost the old drive to the primary partition, and then move your data to one of the other partitions. Your old drive then becomes a repository for backups and general working space.
3. Simply ghost the old drive to the new one 'as is' and then use the old drive for all your data. This would safeguard your files in the event of primary drive failure.
Option 3 is definitely the path of least resistance, but you have to consider what you'll use it for in the future.
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Kuang,
Thanks for the good clear advice. Option 2 is the way Ill go. It doesnt achieve my ideal situation (option 1) but Im not in the mood to spend days at my pc re-loading software.
Andy
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Don't forget that XP has its own Files and Settings Transfer Wizard (look in System Tools) which may help with some data and settings transfers.
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I can't think of one good reason to partition a drive these days. I'm sure someone will enlighten me. They are cheap as chips so if you want two drives, just buy two drives!
Anyway, an important consideration before buying the new drive may be to ensure that your motherboard will support a large drive. I got one for my mate, who had a Tiny computer which didn't seem that old, and nothing I could do would get the motherboard BIOS to recognise the disk, and the BIOS was not upgradeable. He ended up buying new motherboard, memory, processor, case etc etc and we built a new machine using some of his old bits (CD etc)
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Tiny, you say? (sharp intake of breath) Replacing everything isn't too bad an idea then! :-)
Partitioning is handy as a firm separation of data. My laptop & PC have two:
1. System partition for Programs/System Files that type of thing
2. User data
The big benefit is that I can rebuild the computer as it inevitably grinds to a halt as I add apps - and not affect the valuable data I need - format C, reinstall, carry on. The important stuff, my data isn't affected.
HTH,
Lee.
--
Lee
MINI adventure in progress
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Haven't used Ghost but I do use Hyperos.
Hyperos allows you to create images of the system much like Ghost but you then use the images to clone new partitions which you can boot at will.
If you installed an OS and then loaded all default programs and updated all relevant drivers, i.e. Programs only no data you could then save that image in Ghost.
This gives you the perfect system to fall back in the event of a catastrophic failure (takes about 4 minutes to back or restore up an XP image with Office, Paint shop pro and a few other programs).
You don't back up programs - you back-up data which can then be restored at will.
Hyperos can actually boot entirely in extended RAM drives which is useful if you're checking out potential conflicts - if it fails - restart and no changes saved.
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