On 4 Oct 2005 10:40:27 -0700,
paul814@excite.com wrote:
>Hello all,
>
>I have a laptop harddrive that went bad and on the harddrive it says
>ATA/IDE. When looking up the laptop online (HP Pavilion ze5170) it
>says it accepts ATA 2/3/4/5
>
>I see an ATA6 that I want to buy. Will it work in the machine? What
>do you think? And whats the differance?
ATA2/3/4/5 means the laptop supports up to ATA100 mode.
ATA6 is ATA133. The drive should work, should fall back to
ATA100 mode. In "some" cases in the past it might've been
necessary to use a HDD manufacturer's utility to force the
drive into the lower ATA mode, but AFAIK these kinds of
issues have been resolved and are not usually needed today.
On paper ATA6 is faster, but in practice (and particularly
with slower, laptop drives) the performance difference will
not be noticable in use. The most significant performance
difference in use will be from higher RPM, and then larger
cache size. Preferribly you would choose at least 5400 RPM
and 8MB cache if performance is worth an extra dozen $ or
so, give or take a few $ depending on the model.
>
>Since the drive that is in there now says ATA/IDE can I get just an ATA
>and will it be ok?
Yes it will be a try-it-and-see situation, with the
expectation that it will work fine with no further action
necessary.
laptop harddrive and ATA6 
Linear Mode
