Keeping the old hard drive as a slave/backup

[rvrrat3]

So what's the downside in keeping an older, smaller, slower hard drive as a backup/slave when upgrading to a newer, faster, larger hard drive? In my case the new drive is an IBM Deskstar 7200 32gB, the old drive is 2gB. Why doesn't it make sense to keep the older drive as backup storage for data? The seek time on the older drive is certainly much slower, but if it were used only for backup storage, speed would not be a concern. Will the slower hard drive operating on the same bus have any detrimental effect on the faster hard drive?
Thanx

[BigBlue66]

Hi River Rat,

You raise a good point about only using the old HDD for backup purposes. Not real sure about why it would slow down the new HDD if it weren't being used, however, that seems to be the general concensus around here.

A way around it might be to install the old HDD as master on the secondary IDE bus.

This may be way out in left field, but if both HDD's are on the same bus, the machine will try to access both of them before it finds the correct information? If that happens, then surely the slow drive will hamper the speed of the system.

Cheers,

Big Blue 66

[rvrrat3]

Thanks Big Blue. However, connecting the old HDD to the secondary IDE means that it will have to share with the CD Drive. Will that work? What happens if you connect the secondary IDE to the old hard drive set as master and the CD Drive? Can a CD Drive be slave? I'm confused.

[Hardtek1976]

Hello,

Just to add another point since you're going to use the old drive as a backup you might want to consider a removeable hard drive kit. This way the data can be stored in a safe place in case of a catastrophic fialure (power surges, viruses,etc,). Also depending on the disk interface of your motherboard, what it supports dma33/66/100. Then if yours is dma33 I don't see this hindering performance but somebody might correct me. The only foreseeable difficulties I see with this is the re-assinging of drive letters and maybe someone else can input on this.


Ron

[BigBlue66]

Hey River,

Following up on your question about the CD-ROM as slave on the secondary IDE channel; the answer is yes. The CD-ROM should have jumpers on the back that you can set for it to be slave. Make sure the old HDD is connected to the end connector on the cable.

I don't think this setup will significantly slow the system down. One more thing you might consider, though, is to set the CD-ROM as master, and the old HDD as slave using the jumpers on each to do so. Again, whatever you decide, make sure the master unit is connected to the end connector on the cable. In fact, this setup may provide more speed than having the CD-ROM as slave on the secondary IDE.

Cheers,

Big Blue 66