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EnochLight
Location: USA
Posts: 32
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 Posted - Mon Jun 16, 2003 9:21 am |
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Greetings all; wondering if anyone with a similar setup can offer advice.
I have 2 HDD's (Maxtor 80 Gig 7200 RPM ATA133) and 2 CD-ROM's (the Pioneer 105 DVD burner and a Lite-On 48x burner). I am wondering, should I keep both of my CD-ROM's on 1 IDE channel and both of my HDD's on an IDE channel 2 for best performance, or should I have 1 HDD on each IDE set as Master and 1 CD-ROM on each IDE set as Slave?
Don't quite understand the workings of optimum configuration to know the difference. I have a second board that I have a SATA-RAID setup without problems, but this 2nd box is vexing me. Thanks for any insight...
Cheers,
EnochLight
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Havoc
Posts: 735
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| Posted - Mon Jun 16, 2003 9:38 am |
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Just an opinion:
- primary channel: HD with OS and applications + your main burner
- secondary channel: (audio data) + your reader
So burning goes from prim to sec while installing goes from sec to prim. Try to find the combination that does the least data transfers on the same channel.
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ROBSCIX
Posts: 254
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| Posted - Mon Jun 16, 2003 10:55 am |
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The main problem comes into play if you bottle kneck your IDE, IF say you have a ATA 133 drive on the same IDE bus as a slower drive.
You can botle kneck the the cable...I am pretty sure about this I don't have a config like this personally. 
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djwayne
Location: USA
Posts: 583
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| Posted - Mon Jun 16, 2003 11:08 am |
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I have two Maxtors on the same cable the 60G is the master and main drive, and the 10G is set to be the slave, and I use it as a back-up, only. I can toggle back and forth using bios settings.
The DVD/CD-ROM player is set to master and CDRW player set to slave(I think, but not sure) on the other cable. Windows automatically goes to the DVD player first.
Seems to work okay most of the time, but will get a rare occassional lock up while using the DVD player, and surfing at the same time. Since I got the DVD/CDROM player though, I haven't had to use the CDRW, but it should still work okay.
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ROBSCIX
Posts: 254
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| Posted - Mon Jun 16, 2003 11:52 am |
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You will keep getting various opinions on this...Put both HDD'S on The Primary Channel, Both Optical Drives on the Secondary....make sure you have DMA turned on for all DRIVES that Support it..
PRIMARY
MASTER>HDD
SLAVE>HDD
SECONDARY
MASTER>DVD
SLAVE>CDRW
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jester700
Posts: 546
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| Posted - Mon Jun 16, 2003 12:33 pm |
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The idea that slower optical drives on the same IDE channel will slow down a HD is persistent, but I don't think it applies to modern motherboards & drives that are set to DMA. There will be a bottleneck if the secondary drive is ACCESSED while using the primary, but I don't think there is any slowdown just because a slower drive is hanging on the same channel. I've only seen one real world test of this (very informal), but the guy expected a slowdown and didn't see one. It was on one of the geek sites - Anandtech, Tom's, HardOCP, etc.
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ROBSCIX
Posts: 254
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| Posted - Mon Jun 16, 2003 1:23 pm |
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All I said is I have read this..if it applies to "Modern" chipsets,EIDE controllers, is I am sure a subject of much debate....just something to check out, I would personally Disable the primary, get a raid controller and hook both HDD'S on the Primary. Set the controller to RAID 0...That way you'll get the sum of both HDDs at twice the transfer rate. Just a thought.
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codifus
Posts: 36
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| Posted - Sun Jun 22, 2003 1:17 pm |
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RAID 0 Advantage: High speed transfers.
RAID 0 Dis-advantage: Higher risk than normal. If only one of the drives fails, then all of your data is gone.
All the other raids, raid 1, 3, 5, 10 etc, have redunduncy, so data loss is not so much of a concern. Raid 0 has none. Raid 0 should really only be used in a system where you can deal with that risk, or have a high speed large capacity backup in your system as well.
CD
| ROBSCIX wrote: | | All I said is I have read this..if it applies to "Modern" chipsets,EIDE controllers, is I am sure a subject of much debate....just something to check out, I would personally Disable the primary, get a raid controller and hook both HDD'S on the Primary. Set the controller to RAID 0...That way you'll get the sum of both HDDs at twice the transfer rate. Just a thought. |
[i]
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clintfan
Location: USA
Posts: 455
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| Posted - Mon Jun 23, 2003 3:30 pm |
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| Quote: | | The idea that slower optical drives on the same IDE channel will slow down a HD is persistent, but I don't think it applies to modern motherboards & drives that are set to DMA. There will be a bottleneck if the secondary drive is ACCESSED while using the primary, but I don't think there is any slowdown just because a slower drive is hanging on the same channel. -jester700 |
I tend to agree with jester700 on this, though until then I was under the same assumptions. Having been deep into reading Intel datasheets recently, I knew where to go, and I pulled out these three tidbits (out of context, of course): - "When the ATA_FAST bit is set for any of the four IDE devices[ primary/secondary master/slave], then the timings for the transfers to and from the corresponding device run at a higher rate."
- "Different timings can be programmed for each drive in the system."
- "Only one device per connector can be active at a time."[/list:aca17184d0] So the thing about the third point is the faster device will have to wait until the slower device finishes the transaction. I think that's where the generally-held opinions come in. But when the faster device finally does get a chance to run, it will run fast.
There are probably as many opinions on this as there are plugs. Back to Algebra II to compute the number, something factorial divided by something else? I would probably put: - first HD on primary master & use it for OS and data files.
- second HD on secondary master & use it for CEP temp files.
- main CD burner on secondary slave, assuming you use an app like Nero that burns straight from data files on the first HD, not from CEP temp files.
- DVD burner on primary slave, the only spot left.[/list:aca17184d0] I don't know how the CEP burner plugin works, but if it burns from the temp files, and you mostly use that, you might want to swap the CDROM and DVD.
Hope this helps,
-clintfan
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codifus
Posts: 36
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| Posted - Tue Jun 24, 2003 9:21 am |
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I have the perfect solution: get another IDE controller card and put the secondary HD on that one. So you have the primary HD on IDE 1, the CD AND DVD go on IDE 2, because I have a very strong feeling that the CD and DVD will never talk to each other. And finally, put the other HD on IDE3. With this setup, you have the best of everything. It doesn't matter which HD will transfer data to the CD or DVD, because communication between devices will always be between separate IDE channels, which promotes the fastest performance.
CD
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EnochLight
Location: USA
Posts: 32
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| Posted - Wed Jun 25, 2003 6:41 pm |
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Wow, thanks for all of the insight guys - I appreciate the help.
Cheers,
EnochLight
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2 Harddrives and 2 CD-ROM's: how to hookup?