Thread: WDC 80GB Compatability

I'm planning on buying a WDC 80GB UDMA100 (WD800JB) as a second hard drive and I'm not sure if it is compatible with my current system. I currently have a UK Gateway P3-600 system with Win98SE. The HDD it came with is a WDC 27GB (WD273BA) connected to a Promise Ultra66 controller card (PDC20262). The motherboard is an Intel WS440BX with Intel 4W4SB0X0.15A.0017.P12 Bios.

A number of questions I'd be grateful for some help with:
Can I connect the WD800JB to my Promise Card as well as my existing disk?
Will my setup be able to recognise a disk of that size?
Am I correct in saying that I won't get the best performance out of the new drive because I'm running it on an old card?
If I buy a new card will I still get sub-optimum performance on the new disk if I also run the old disk off the new card?
Does it really make that much difference?
Can I have two controller cards with one disk attached to each?

I recommend that you dump the Ultra66 card and go for a Promise Ultra 100 TX2. It is a newer card that is backward compatible to Ultra 66 drives. If you use your current card, you will run BOTH hard drives in Ultra DMA 4, but with the new card, it will run the older Drive in ultra DMA 4 and the new JB drive in Ultra DMA 5...getting the best out of both drives. The Ultra 66 should recognize the total 80 GB of the new drive...but I guarantee that an Ultra 100 WILL. I would not run two controllers...just the one...remember that the promise card has two independent IDE channels on the card.