Why in the World: An IDE HDD

This round we'll be talking about IDE hard drives and uses for them. Or rather, what I use them for. I will also talk about what machines I have that use IDE, what IDE is still good for, and what drives to try and scrap if you should so happen to end up with some.

With IDE nowadays there is little chance your motherboard will support it. The reason I went with the machine that I did was not only to cut costs but also to be able to use the hardware I am familiar with. While everyone nowadays needs the fastest possible everything for mincraft, rarely do you actually need 150 MB/s read write on a hard drive. About 20 will do and with the drives I have, Seagate Barracuda IV's and V's (speed 3 drives, more on that later though), 20 to 25 MB/s is as common as grass. For note these are reliable drives and if set up correctly with FS and every thing they are fine in any system.

Now I mentioned Speed 3 as a rating. I don't know if its a big thing or not, but my boss at my HS when I worked tech for them had me categorize everything by speeds. Speed 1 was stuff like the 150 MB WD Caviar drives you would find in Win 95 machines. Quantum Fireball XL's (4.5 GB to 15 GB) were the ceiling to this. Farther back with like the Bigfoot drives and the massive things aren't counted as those are way too big. The standard sized drives that we have today are in the listing. Both hard drive size and RPM fed to this. 4500 RPM and back fits to speed 1 and gives only so many reads and writes, as expected. Expect 5 MB/s on these drives.

Speed 2 is 5400 to 7200, as is 3 and 4, but as the tech got better on HDD heads and on bus it becomes more a mix between them all. These drives honestly aren't reliable to me. The tech wasn't quite there for the drives so they spun them selves to death or just burnt up. The IBM HDD's of 1998 to 2003, hitachi Deathstars, and Cole EB's are what I think of here. Maxtor too, but they got better as time let on. The first 20 - 40 GB drives and up are what is around here. Expect 10 - 12 MB/s on these at best. If less than that they are on the way out the door.

Speed 3 and 4 are very similar. 54-7200 as stated, but the difference between them are write speeds via the IDE bus itself and the size of the drives. As I said my seagates are speed 3 and go from 40 to 100 GB, and speed 4 can go to 500 GB as IDE was stretched out during the introduction of SATA to mass market. Speed 3 should have 20-25 MB/s and speed 4 should almost hit 30.

All this has to do with how the hardware all talks to each other and how your OS can handle the FS's together. I use XFS on my linux machines because for older HDD's or slower ones it all stays listed in ram or swap. Very handy and it feels snappier.

The problem I am solving today is I set up my machine without a swap slot on anything. I'm too far in now and I don't feel like redoing everything. So, my plan is to take a Speed 3 HDD and tie it in to the line my CD drive is on. In doing this I have a swapFS and I have some space left over for music or whatever.

If you're wondering my MOBO is an Asus M4A88T-M and IDE is as maxed out as it can be.

Now in an old machine like an EMachines T5048 where sata data and IDE are available its not really worth using an SSD and if you just have IDE HDD's laying around then go ahead and use them. Since theres only 2 HDD slots theres no real reason to stack drives in it. An SSD also will make little difference on a system like that as it can only go so fast. Putting an SSD in a system that early makes as much sense as putting an SSD in a mac G5. You won't gain anything and it won't boot fast enough to be worth the cost or use of that SSD in that system to be worth the time. However if the system is a core 2 and up of course use one.

Past this the rest is up for you to play with. Some fun things can be found as well. Some drives are labeled 40, but are 80 or 120 GB and are just limited. Theres a way to open that space up but I don't remember nor do I have any use for that tool. If you're interested I believe VWestLife talked about it on his YT channel or maybe it was UXWBill.

Also for note don't build a new 12 core machine and put an IDE drive in it for gaming. Thats just stupid.

I think I have actually said everything I can for IDE HDD's so I won't make any more posts here.

like this?

My point is it doesn't help boot time. If you were video editing at the time with a G5 computer, maybe if the 970GM/GX was released it would have made sense.