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Maxtor's ATA-133 Does 160GB

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the 160-scoops-of-yum dept.

B. Galliart writes "ExtremeTech has an article about Maxtor's two new bleeding edge ATA-133 drive models coming out later this month. The most interesting of these is the 160 Gigabyte DiamondMax Plus D540X (priced around $400) which uses Maxtor's purposed "BigDrive" 48-bit address space instead of the common E/IDE 28-bit address space thus getting pass the 137GB barrier. The drive should be useable on existing computers due to a bundled Promise Technologies ATA-133 PCI card."

8 of 221 comments (clear)

  1. this looks _boring_ today by ankit · · Score: 0, Interesting

    On any other day I would have jumped to this site to get more info. But not today!

    --
    Don't Panic
  2. I didn't know by samael · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I didn't know that there was a problem with drives over 137GB in IDE. Is there an extension planned? Or are we doomed to proprietary extensions from here on out?

    --
    My Journal
    1. Re:I didn't know by jtdubs · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I would assume that once we make the move to Serial ATA, if that ever happens, it would be as simple as upping the clocking on the serial line to add more bits to the address space and hence maximum addressable size.

      So, once that happens I would expect a clocking standard that would give us more than the 28 bits of addressing we have now.

      Justin Dubs

    2. Re:I didn't know by imroy · · Score: 2, Interesting
      So, once that happens I would expect a clocking standard that would give us more than the 28 bits of addressing we have now.

      We already have that. It's called ATAPI. It's already used by non-harddisk IDE devices like CDROM, DVD, and CDR/RW drives, removable drives (Zip, Jaz, Orb, LS-120...), and tape drives. From what I understand, ATAPI uses SCSI-II commands sent over the physical IDE channel. So you don't get over the mater-slave limitation of IDE, but you get more reasonable block addressing. BTW, this is the reason you almost must use the ide-scsi driver to use CDR/RW drives under Linux. I've also found that my DVD drive works much better with the SCSI CDROM and ide-scsi drivers than the IDE CDROM driver.

      This was bound to happen soon. You can only go so far with 28 bits, or whatever the original IDE has. LBA gave us some time, but harddisks must now go to ATAPI.

  3. Controller troubles by PsyQ · · Score: 2, Interesting

    What will happen now when other manufacturers release their new hard drives? Will all controller manufacturers have to keep updating their controllers to include support for everyone's proprietary ATA extensions or will they all have firmware so you can use whichever driver matches your drive?

    What if your brand new 330 GB slave drive isn't from the same manufacturer as the master one? Will you there be "multi-BIOS" capable controllers or are you gonna need one card for each drive, eating up all your IRQs?

    Does this call for a "next big thing" to replace the IDE/ATA standard or will we get ourselves into the same awkward situation that gave us MS-DOS' "memory management" back then, i.e. a patch to patch the patch that fixed the patch?

    160 GB on one drive does sound cool, but I hope some standard is on the horizon. Something as fundamental as a hard drive shouldn't be left to conflicting proprietary standards..

  4. Re:It's the rotation speed that counts by MadCamel · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Agreed. Being a very poor computer person, I tend to keep drives around for a very long time, as I cannot afford new ones. Every 7200rpm drive I have had has died within 2 years, while all my 5400(and lower) drives are still in working order, some of them dating back to 1991.
    My computer(yes I only have one *sigh*) was dropped down the stairs with a 5400rpm 6 gig and a 7200rpm 20 gig in a moving accident. Guess which drive survived without -any- problems? I for one will never buy another high-rpm drive until they have proven them reliable.

  5. Re:*groan* This is getting silly by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Try video editing. I just dumped a 90-minute Hi8 tape over IEEE-1394 into a 19GB file.

    ac.uk

  6. Re:Of course we need news like this by Syberghost · · Score: 4, Interesting

    If we want to hear more about the terrorism we can go to cnn.com

    Unless you want what you hear to be accurate.

    They spent an hour yesterday reporting a "CNN Exclusive: the US Bombs Afghanistan". It was an exclusive, all right; exclusively in CNN's heads. Afghanistan was bombing Afghanistan, like they do approximately daily.

    They were reporting the Camp David attack that didn't happen, the George Washington Bridge bombing that didn't happen, the State Department carbomb, etc. etc.