1 CD burner, 1 DVD burner, 2 hard drives. what's the best IDE cable config?

[chinkee]

one hd is a 40 gig hd which i plan on using for the system. the other is a 120 gig backup drive used for storage. i have a dvd burner, but plan on getting a cd burner to give my dvd burner a breather and extend its lifespan. what IDE cable setup is ideal for best transfer speeds and stuff?

 

[jdogg707]

I would put the whichever burner you are going to be using more with the 120GB drive, and the one you won't be using as much with the 40GB drive. The best would be if you could get SATA converter's and use the hard drive's on SATA channel's and let each of the Burner's have their own separate channel.

 

[myocardia]

Yeah, but with 4 IDE-only devices, the best setup is to put both hd's on the primary channel, so that way you get full speed data transfer from either hd to either of the optical drives. Since the hd's share a channel, the data will only transfer at half the speed between the two hd's, but that's not a big concern, since hd's transfer data so fast anyway. If you happen to have an 8x DVD burner, or a 48x or faster cd burner, you won't be able to use their full speed, unless you put them on a separate channel from the two hd's.

 

[GtPrOjEcTX]

pri master: 40 gig
pri slave: (which ever optical drive you will be using the least)
sec master: 120 gig
sec slave: (the other optical drive)

 

[drag]

I have:

hda (primary master) = Western digital 80gig ---- this is my main system/program drive
hdb (primary slave) = LG DVD combo(also writes CDs) drive
hdc (secondary master) = Western digital 120gig ---main home drive, multimedia stuff
hdd (secondary slave) = Generic CD burner.

The main reason is that I can transfer files from one drive to another as fast as possible. Having them both on one channel realy slows things down.

Also when I want to burn lots of cdroms I can mount the cdrom images into a ramdisk, that is put the image into my ram and burn to both cdrom drives at the same time.

Also so I can rip from both drives to ramdisk at the same time with little slowdown. Good for when I get around to compressing my CD music collection, or when I borrow a bunch of my freind's cds.

edit:
(actually I use tmpfs nowadays, not ramdisks)

 

[dnuggett]

Do not place both a CD/DVD and a HD on the same channel, it slows down the HD quite a bit.

 

[myocardia]

Well, all I know is I've tried it every way possible, and the way that I was happiest with was with both hd's on the primary, and both optical drives on the secondary. And, Drag, if this guy knew how to make a ramdisk, he wouldn't be in here asking which drive to put where.😉

 

[drag]

Originally posted by: myocardia
Well, all I know is I've tried it every way possible, and the way that I was happiest with was with both hd's on the primary, and both optical drives on the secondary. And, Drag, if this guy knew how to make a ramdisk, he wouldn't be in here asking which drive to put where.😉

I know, but it's nice to know whats possible. 🙂

Do not place both a CD/DVD and a HD on the same channel, it slows down the HD quite a bit.

why?

As long as the drive is the master, how does it slow it down?

 

[beatle]

Originally posted by: drag

Originally posted by: myocardia
Well, all I know is I've tried it every way possible, and the way that I was happiest with was with both hd's on the primary, and both optical drives on the secondary. And, Drag, if this guy knew how to make a ramdisk, he wouldn't be in here asking which drive to put where.😉

I know, but it's nice to know whats possible. 🙂

Do not place both a CD/DVD and a HD on the same channel, it slows down the HD quite a bit.

why?

As long as the drive is the master, how does it slow it down?

It doesn't slow it down. This was in the "old days" where 2 devices had to operate at the same speed. Modern motherboards and drives don't have this problem.

For the OP: ALWAYS keep your hard drives on separate channels. The performance hit you'd get if reading from one optical and writing to the hard drive on the same channel will be minimal as optical drives are MUCH slower than modern hard drives.

 

[dnuggett]

It doesn't slow it down. This was in the "old days" where 2 devices had to operate at the same speed. Modern motherboards and drives don't have this problem.

Yep, after researching this I stand corrected. Thanks for clearing that up.