System information

Service and Technical Reference Guide, xw3100 G–3
Ultra ATA Drive Guidelines and Features
✎
The above classifications are used as examples only. Your system may or may not support some
Class 4 drives. A diskette drive is Class 4, however, this drive has an exclusive connector on the
system board and is not considered when “counting” the number of devices allowed on a given
ATA controller. For a hardware compatibility list for your specific system, please refer to
www.hp.com/support.
General Attach Guidelines
■ The lower the device class number, the faster the device and the more bandwidth required.
■ Drives installed in the Device 0 positions on both the primary and secondary controllers
receive the greatest possible bandwidth.
■ The bootable ATA hard drive should always be installed on the primary controller in the
Device 0 position.
Device Attach Sequences
Scenario One: a system has two devices. Using the Device Class Table above, the device class
for each is identified as:
■ Ultra ATA-100 hard drive = Class 1
■ DVD-ROM drive = Class 2
Class 1
Hard
Drives
Class 2
High Speed
Optical Drives
Class 3
Optical Storage
Drives
Class 4
Magnetic
Storage Drives
ATA-100
ATA-66
ATA-33
DVD
DVD-CD R/W
R/W CD-ROM
CD-ROM
LS-120
Tape
Zip
Diskette
Attach Sequence - Two Device
Device Name Device Class
Position
Number
ATA Controller
Device
Number
Ultra ATA-100 hard drive 1 1 Primary 0
DVD-ROM drive 2 2 Secondary 0