Need help with hard drive (might have purchased the wrong one)

Hi, I've posted before and got some good feedbacks. In short, my laptop's hard drive died so I was looking for a replacement. I was supposed to get one with ata-6. I recently purchased one on ebay but noticed that it says ultra ata/100 and now I'm wondering if I purchased the wrong one. But the same item on newegg, it clearly says ata-6. So my question is if these two terms (ultra ata/100 and ata-6) are used interchangeably and thus the same. Or did I mess up by buying the wrong item?

These items have the same model number.
This one here on Ebay http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=42184&item=6879594771
has ultra ata/100 but
this one on newegg http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822148088
says ata 6.

Doesn't that mean they are the same thing?

 

I believe ATA-5 is ATA-100 aka 100MB/s bandwidth and ATA-6 is ATA-133.

But these things are not impotant at all. No notebook hard drive will utilise the bandwidth anyway. All you need to know is that you need to buy an (parallel) ATA drive which you did and not Serial ATA (S-ATA) because the interface is different.

 

ATA-6 computers can run ATA-6/5 drives

ATA-6 drives can run on computers that support ATA-5 max, they will just run at ATA-5 standard (backward compatible)

as mentioned before

ATA-6 ----> 133MB/S (ATA-133)
ATA-5 ----> 100MB/S (ATA-100)

 

Well what does that mean? Does it mean then it'll now run slower because it's really ata-5 as you put it?

 

No as I said earlier, no notebook hard drive will utilise the full bandwidth.

The sustained transfer rate of hard disk is somwhere in the region of 30 - 60 MB/s so even ATA-4 (ATA-66 66MB/s) is enough. So no your hard disk will not run slower.

Take this analogy: There are 10 railway tracks going from point A to B but there are only 6 trains so it's impossible to use all 10 tracks with only 6 trains at the same time. However there is headroom for more trains in the future (future there maybe faster hard drives to utilise this bandwidth).

 

Thanks for that.
I have another concern. Comparing my dead hard drive and what I purchased on Ebay http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dl...search.dll?from=R40&satitle=6879594771+&fvi=1
my dead one has this black plastic thing covering the pins (I think they're called pins but they are the little metal parts that stick out on either top or bottom of hard drive), but the picture on Ebay does not have the pins covered by this plastic thing.
Do hard drives usually come with this black platic thing covering the pins?

 

that's a jumper to select the configuration of the HDD. (cable select / master / slave)

as u can see in the pic that u posted, the settings to use a jumper are printed on the drive. so you can use the jumper that is now on your dead HDD IF YOU NEED IT. Most of the time having no jumper will automatically mean cable select, ie the motherboard will take care of configuring it automatically

 

Those are jumpers. They're used to configure certain settings on the drive. Sometimes, you don't need the jumpers on the pins(closing the circuit) for some configuration. Every drive is configured differently.

However, odds are, if the new drive doesn't include the jumpers(it probably will in a separate baggy, or mounted on the drive in a default configuration), you could use the ones on your old drive. If they aren't there, and not compatible with your old drive, head to any friendly computer shop. They'll give you some. There's only like 2 types that are commonly used.

Oh...and if you ask about setting the jumpers? You'll need it set as "Master". It's hard to see the information exactly on that pic, as it's a bit blurry to read, but it looks like the description on the top of the drive shows "no jumpers" as being configured for "master". So odds are, you won't even need them.

edit - qwester beat me to it.

 

Got it!!!
I was able to slide this off!!! What a fool I was. It's not my field, but should have used common sense.
Well, I want to thank everyone who contributed. Really appreciate your help. Chances are I'll be back for more questions.
Thanks again!!!