Question: How much of a performance increase do you get for going from an ATA66 or ATA100 setup to an ATA133 for the HD? I read an article recently that said that, even though these newest motherboards and HD's "support" a 100 or 133 meg/s transfer rate, most 7200 rpm drives peak around 20meg/s. If this is true, then, is there any advantage at all of having an ATA133 over the other two? I am curious because I will be putting a computer together soon, and am debating whether or not to replace my 30gig ATA66 Maxtor with an ATA133 drive.

Thanks!

Orion

You would theoretically get a 33 megabits/sec speed increase.

But in actual practice, I have not noticed a data transfer speed increase between 100 and 133. Hard drives only spin so fast, and generally, unless you do heavy multimedia where the drive is continuously transmitting a data stream, will most notice anything better.