At 10:55 PM 12/27/1999 , Patrick Black wrote:
>Hello all,
>
>I know that most of the newer motherboards with U66 come with 2 U33 and
>2U66--which also support U33 devices as well.
>
>What I was wondering is will a UDMA 66 Drive work with UDMA 33 only
>motherboards,I'm in need of HD upgrade (4 Gigs isnt' as big as it used to
>be!) I'm looking at 20 to 40 which have droped in price in the past few
>months(All of which are UDMA66).  This is part of a planned Computer
>upgrade, but I want to wait for mobo,CPU,and defintie memory prices to drop
>a bit.

The simple answer to you question is:  UDMA66 drives are backwardly compatible
with a UDMA33 controller.

The bigger question concerns your motherboard's bios and will it now support
drives that large?   I would consult the motherboard manufacturer's web site
to see if the motherboard will support hard drives over 8gigs and if not, do
they have a Flash Bios to upgrade it to support large drives.  Otherwise you
will be loading either a software utility to allow the larger drive to be used,
investing in a controller card or investing in a new motherboard to support
the larger drive.   As a rule of thumb, if your Bios is newer than January of
1998, you should not have any problems.

      Bob Wright
The NOSPIN Group

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