Hi, is there any comparison chart that u guys have found? pls send thanks. I'm currently using WD ATA100 8MB cache. As I'm purchasing new computer, my vendor advised me to get Maxtor ATA133 because it seems that most motherboard support ATA133. is that true?? Another thing is what HDD size do u guys think is sufficient? Because the price difference between 40GB and 60GB is not much of a difference...

ATA133 is so much better, the 133 is the speed of the connection through the board if you want to get a new HDD get some thing that has ATA133 72000rpm and 60gig, like you said not much difference between them in price and it is always nice to have extra disc space

Many of us feel the difference between ATA100 and ATA133 will show up in disk benchmarks more than in everyday use.

Yes, the difference between the two in everyday use is miniscule. 133mhz is the maximum burst speed. In actual use drives do not even average 100mhz.

There is a minimal difference between ATA100 and ATA133, you can only tell by seeing the benchmark yourself. ATA100 means the Hard Drive will have 100MB/sec Max at reading and writting. ATA133 means 133Mb/Sec Max at reading and writting. There aren't any IDE drives can reach 100MB yet, the fastest I'd seen is around 80MB/Sec at reading and writting. Unless you planning to do Raid with your hard drive, then ATA133 will show the difference, otherwise, minimal difference.

ATA133 hard drives were first defined by Maxtor. Many at the time thought this only a marketing ploy since ATA133 was only marginally faster than ATA100. Drives up to then were also limted to 128GB (aka 137GB) because of address limitations. Since drives were about to execeed that limit manufactures got together and created a new drive standard which combined Maxtor's ATA133 with larger drive support up to 144 million GB (actually 2200 GB but that's another story). They also called this ATA133. Since Maxtor has the rights to ATA133 drives no other manufactures have licensed it. They have stuck to a maximum ATA100. Current ATA100 drives addressing have been extended to also allow drives larger than 128GB (aka 137GB) Current motherboards with ATA133 interfaces support ATA100/133 drives and allow drives to be larger than 128GB (aka 137GB).

I have an ata133 with 2 meg cache. I would swap it for an ATA100 with 8 meg of cache any day!!!! The cache makes a HUGE difference. You should only upgrade if you work with video. Like others say, the benchmark will show the difference, but in the real world, you will never know. It only becomes important in REAL WORLD use, if you are transferring large amounts of data from one drive to another, ie, you do work with video, you need high speed for capture, and high speed for transfer from capture drive to target drive (moving 2 or more gigs of data is still a long process on any drive at the moment). Save your bucks, and buy a serial drive when they get to a seriously faster speed over IDE.