posted
So, I received some free desktops from work, old P4 Northwoods. I ordered some IDE hard drives off of Geeks.com before looking too carefully.
The Dell specs say that it takes an ATA/100 hard drive. I ordered an ATA/133. Checking Wikipedia, the 133 was the next revision (ATA-7). My guess is that it would be backward compatible in my Dell, but it would be limited (as ATA is) by the ATA/100 speed. Is this a correct assumption? Or will the drive be incompatible?
Posts: 1204 | Registered: Mar 2003
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posted
Should be ok. With that difference in ages, you should do a quick check to see whether the motherboard/motherboard firmware/OS are compatible with the size of the hard drives though.
Posts: 7593 | Registered: Sep 2006
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posted
Yeah, it seems that size is regulated by the ATA standard itself. The biggest ATA/100 drives are 120 Gb. Should be fine for a kid's computer.
Posts: 1204 | Registered: Mar 2003
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posted
Hmmm, I think I meant more on the other end. As in I do recall occasionally on computers of that era, sticking in a hard drive and getting a much smaller size than advertised (and then having to flash motherboard firmware). It should be obvious when you try it though.
Posts: 7593 | Registered: Sep 2006
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