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I am thinking about adding a second hard drive to my computer but know squat about them. My current hard drive is a IBM Pluto 20GB 7200 RPM Ultra DMA/66 IDE. I have a P3 866 MHz running W98 SE with 640 MB RAM. Can I add a ATA 100 H.D. to my system or do I have to stick with a 66 ? Would I need anything else or have to do anything else other than slapping the HD in ? Any other useful recommendations ?

Thanks !

Westy

you'll be all set! It'll run fine at ata66. Plus, you'll have the software, instructions and cable you need included if you buy it retail.

unless you have a motherboard that supports ata 100 its a waste of money. You can get a pci card that will bump you up to ata 100 but that takes up a slot and i don't think performs as well as if it were on the motherboard. If your not too worried about performance ata 66 is fine and cheaper!

yes, an ata100 HD will work fine and it doesnt cost more. most hard drives support ata100 now.

Another benefit of getting an ATA-100 drive now, is, say in a few months or next year when you decide to do another upgrade, you'll have a decent hard drive to carry along with you, and be able to run at it's potential in your new system.

Now that ATA-133 is hitting the market in full force now, ATA-100 drives are bargains, so it would be a good move.

I don't believe in buying yesteryears technology new. True the ATA-100 drive will only run at ATA-66 speeds in your current system, but other newer "things" about the drive since overall it's a newer design, you may find it faster than an ATA-66, even though the bus speed itself is limited.

Originally posted by westy
I am thinking about adding a second hard drive to my computer but know squat about them. My current hard drive is a IBM Pluto 20GB 7200 RPM Ultra DMA/66 IDE. I have a P3 866 MHz running W98 SE with 640 MB RAM. Can I add a ATA 100 H.D. to my system or do I have to stick with a 66 ? Would I need anything else or have to do anything else other than slapping the HD in ? Any other useful recommendations ?

Thanks !

Westy

The others have addressed the compatabilty issue well. No need to go further with that.

There is the issue of "slapping the HD in".
The HD has jumpers on it. Your main drive is probably already set to master, the new one will need to be set as slave in order to function, if you put it on the same ribbon as another drive.
The BIOS setup will need to have a setting set to detect the new drive too. Auto works well in most cases.
The drive will need to be partitioned too. At least one partition, using Fdisk, or some other partitioning tool.
Then it will need to be formatted.

That's why I like the WD hard drives for newbies to it. They have a huge instruction sheet and a fantastic floppy install program that's easy to follow. You can partition the drive, copy the drive and even format; right from that floppy disk program. Plus, my westren digital hard drive is 2x faster then my maxtor.