master/slave or siig ata 100?

[pc_dude]

hi all-
first my relevant specs:
hdd#1 on primary ide
cdrw on secondary ide
hdd#2 on primary of siig ata 100 card
dvd on secondary of siig ata 100 card
udma100 cables on each

okay here's the deal: i process a lot of multimedia data from one hdd to the other, so i thought i would maximize transfer speeds if each drive had it's own channel. however, that friggin siig card adds about a minute to my boot up time into windoze98. before the card, i could boot in about 30
seconds. so yes, i hate that stupid card.
so first question: anybody know how to speed it up?
second question: would i compromise a lot transfer speed if each hdd had a
slave on it, as in: hdd#1 master, cdrw slave, on primary ide. hdd#2 master, dvd slave, on secondary ide.
*my burner's pretty slow anyways, so transfer speed to that thing isn't much of a concern.
*the dvd is just for watching movies

any suggestions out there? thanks to all!

[BigBlue66]

Hi and Welcome,

Do you have a secondary IDE channel on the motherboard? If so, does the motherboard support ATA 100? I assume it does.

If you have a secondary IDE channel on the motherboard, and it supports ATA 100, then you might try installing one HD as master on the motherboard primary IDE and the other HD as master on the motherboard secondary IDE. Then, you could install the CDRW and DVD on the siig add-on card.

The general rule of thumb is that if you add any kind of CD or DVD unit as slave to a master HD, the CD or DVD units will drag down the HD.

This is an interesting one. Hang tight for a few more opinions. It sounds like you have quite a few options, so we need to figger out which one is the best. I don't have as much experience with multiple component configurations as some of the others. However, it couldn't hurt to try the ideas above. I think.

Cheers,

Big Blue 66

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Woe is me.

[pc_dude]

btw thanx for the quick response, bigblue.

let me clarify a few more things: the mobo is an a7m266, the cpu is a tbird 1.33, and i've got 2 256mb crucial pc2100s. the primary and secondary ides are either ata66 or ata100, i'll have to check the manual.

the thing is, i would prefer to not use the siig at all, that's why i wanted to move all four devices to the onboard ides. i'd be willing to put up with the slowass siig card if the cd and dvd as slaves drag down the hdds significantly. otherwise, that card's gonna show up on ebay.

[iisbob]

Blue has pretty much sounded out the realy viable options here, not too mention the consequences ( cd/dvd killing your HD performance ) so i would humbly suggest that you look into getting a raid mobo; sounds like you're a prime canidate to me. http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/smile.gif

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iisbob
"Soap and education are not as sudden as a massacre, but they are more deadly in the long run."

[ZeroCool]

I agree with putting the DVD/CD-ROM drives on their own IDE channel and then leaving the HDDs on their own. I guess you could get a RAID mobo but running a scuzzy is a ridiculously expensive tradeoff just so you can run your DVD/CD-ROM drives on the same IDE channel as your HDDs. Hope that helps...

[pc_dude]

alright, just for closure, i'll explain what a finally did. btw, sorry for the delay, i got caught up in a virus/trojan mess at work.
anywayz, i decided to test how much data transfer speed i would lose. so the first thing to do was benchmark my drives. using the system monitor in w98, there's a counter for kb's written per second, and kb's read per second. with those enabled, i transferred a 300MB mpeg from one hdd to the other. Then i transferred a 300MB mpeg from a cd in the burner to a hdd, and from the dvd to a hdd.
then i moved each hdd to it's own on-board ide channel, both as masters. then the cdrw and dvd were both slaves.

here are my numbers, all in megabytes per second:

---One drive per port---
hdd to hdd: 28 to 32
cdrw to hdd: 3 to 6
dvd to hdd: 7 to 10

---two drives per port (hdd = master, cd or dvd as slave)---
hdd to hdd: 15 to 19
cdrw to hdd on the other ide port: 1 to 3
dvd to hdd on the other ide port: 4 to 6

well, what they say about hdd's with slaves slowing down everything is totally true. however, my transfers weren't that bad, i could live with it.
since i don't have to use that siig card, my boot time has totally sped up.
so i guess i'll leave it this way.

thanx again to all contributors, this website and it's peeps are great.