What was the best EIDE / MWDMA storage device? \ VOGONS

What was the best EIDE / MWDMA storage device?

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First post, by douglar

Posted on 2024-12-30, 21:56

douglar Offline

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If you have a controller that only does PIO, you are pretty much good with just about any PATA device out there. If you have UDMA, there are a lot of fast & compatible storage options.

But if you have a controller from PATA's awkward in between phase that can only do MWDMA, the world gets a lot smaller.

There are some solid state options but they all have their share of asterisks, exceptions, and caveats when it comes to MWDMA.

If you had to pick a high end mechanical hard drive from the 1990's to pair with a MWDMA controller, what would you use?

Quantum Fireball EX?
Maxtor Diamond Max ?
Western Digital Caviar?
Seagate Medalist?
IBM Deskstar?

Reply 1 of 2, by Horun

Posted on 2025-01-01, 02:22

Horun Offline

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Wow... I liked all those drives and still have some. Not sure which is best. What is the max size the bios can see ?
7200rpm IDE didn't really show up much until about the 10Gb size iirc though scsi had 7200 as low as 4.5gb or less....would go with one if possible.
IS it a CMD640 controller by chance ? 😀

Hate posting a reply and then have to edit it because it made no sense 😁 First computer was an IBM 3270 workstation with CGA monitor. Stuff: https://archive.org/details/@horun

Reply 2 of 2, by douglar

Posted on 2025-01-02, 04:05

douglar Offline

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Horun wrote on 2025-01-01, 02:22:

Wow... I liked all those drives and still have some. Not sure which is best. What is the max size the bios can see ?
7200rpm IDE didn't really show up much until about the 10Gb size iirc though scsi had 7200 as low as 4.5gb or less....would go with one if possible.
IS it a CMD640 controller by chance ? 😀

I’m looking at ATA3&4 drives with a max size of 8.4gb. 5400rpm is going to be fine.

I’ve got a promise pdc20630 controller. Trying to get it to do DMA in Win9x. But if I cant make that work, I could try the CMD640, but they have a rep for being finicky, no?

I’ve collected some Caviar drives in the <=2gb range and some 6gb fireball drives over the years. I was wondering if anyone had a strong affinity for the other brands.

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