ATA 100 or ATA 133 cable?

[Selphie]

The IDE cable I am using in my computer came with my mobo. When I am booting up, just after BIOS checks when it reports all the hardware connections and all that, my harddrive is listed as ATA133 40MB (which I really believe is coded in the hardware ID of my harddrive).

The thing is, the IDE cable is the cheaper flat 80-wire cable, not the round type. How do I check whether it is operating at ATA133 or just ATA100?

Also, I have heard that Windows by default runs all harddrives at ATA33, is this true? How do I change this?

[John Prophet]

you could probably run somethign like sisoft sandra or another benchmark program.

or maybe info msinfo32

as far as ata33 being default..uhmm, not sure I ever heard that 1 before.....what version of wondows you got?

If the motherboard supports ata133 Id have to guess that the bios is correct in what it says.

[stroyal]

sisoft sandra will compare benchmarks to examples of other drives.

[JohnE.]

If it's an ATA133 drive, an 80-pin cable would be operating at ATA133, it can't be any other way.

Which version of Windows? Windows by default runs drives at whatever speed the drive is, whoever told you otherwise is misinformed. Assuming the hardware isn't defective and you haven't misconfigured something, Windows will operate the drives at the correct speed.

[John Prophet]

but doesnt sandra also tell you system specs etc..like cpu speed, blah blah..surely it will tell ata speeds too?

[JohnE.]

Forgot to mention... if it's Win2K or XP you can go to Device Manager (IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers) and look at the properties/advanced settings of the Primary and Secondary IDE Channels to see what DMA mode they're currently running in. For Win9x you'll probably have to use some third-party utility to check.

[stroyal]

Sandra dose have system specs, but the benchmark comparison will tell if the drive is running as fast as it should.
I tested a drive once that was very slow.
Come to find out DMA was not enabled.
When I enabled it, the drive was as fast as comparable drives