IDE configuration for 2 HD, CD, CD-RW

[tchris]

I have 1 hard drive (Quantum Fireball lct10) and have purchased a new one (IBM 75GXP). I also have CD-rom and CD-RW. I have only 2 IDE channels http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/frown.gif. The PCGuide recommendation is to put the boot drive as master with the least used drive, and the other two devices on the other channel. A sysadmin friend recommended the boot drive and cd on one channel, the older drive and cd-rw on the other. Any other recommendations/ opinions/ thoughts on the topic?

[Rick]

It is always best to put the faster devices on one channel and the slower on the other.
Hook Both hard drives on the primary and the cd and cd-rw on the secondary.

Mixing the devices in some cases can affect the performance of the faster device.(slows it down)

[tchris]

The specs for my motherboard say that the IDE connections are "independent bus-mastering PCI IDE interfaces ..." Doesn't this mean that they will support independent timing and won't be limited by the slower device on the connection? Or is there more to it?

[Rick]

I think what the independent bus-mastering is referring to is.
That each controller is independent.

One on IRQ 14 (The Master/primary)and the secondary on IRQ 15

[tchris]

That's too bad. Guess I have only one choice then.

[tjaymadison]

If you're going to do a fair amount of CD burning, you need to decide on your best path. You can try burning direct from the CD to the RW, but you may have to "throttle back" your burning speed to avoid buffer under-runs, unless you have a RW drive with the BurnProof feature. Usually burning from a hard drive image to the RW is more likely to succeed at higher burn speeds. In this latter case, you'd want the RW on a different channel from the hard drive source. And since the IBM HD is bigger and faster, you probably want it to be your boot drive. The Quantum lct-series drives only spin at something like 4600 RPM -- they call this a "noise-reduction feature"!?! http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/rolleyes.gif

My two cents:
Primary Master - IBM
Primary Slave - Quantum (fast enough as image source, good place for swap file)
Secondary Master - RW
Secondary Slave - CD

This way you can copy from the CD to the Quantum, then burn from the Quantum to the RW. Newer hard drives of different ATA speeds operate on the same channel without a performance penalty, as long as you use the 80-wire data cable (if necessary for the IBM), and your IDE controller supports the fastest HD's ATA speed.

Do yourself a couple of favors. The IBM is large enough that you might want to partition it, and you might also want to partition the Quantum for the swap file, games, etc. If you do decide to partition, use FDISK to make the ones on the Quantum all logical partitions in an extended partition. That way your drive letters will stay "in order" and you won't have C: on the IBM, D: on the Quantum, and then E: back on the IBM. Then after you install Windows, but before you install any other software, use Device Manager to re-assign the CD and RW drive letters up higher in the alphabet. This will allow room for growth, and if you try to do it later, there's a problem with broken links when you install software updates.

[This message has been edited by tjaymadison (edited 04-06-2001).]

[This message has been edited by tjaymadison (edited 04-06-2001).]

[tchris]

thanks, both of you! This is leading into another question... I'm hoping to clone the existing boot partition onto the newer drive. Existing OS is win NT. You have any experience with this? If so, I have another post you might want to visit: http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/Forum9/HTML/000634.html