2 harddrives + 1 cdrom = what channel?

[johneetrash]

simple question i guess.. im putting together a system and its gonna have 2 ATA100 drives and 1 DVD... should i setup 2 harddrives on the primary channel and the dvd in secondary, or 1 harddrive and the dvd on primary, and 2nd hard drive in secondary? thanks

oh im planning to put it on a MSi k7T Pro 2-A

 

[Zach]

I prefer to keep the drives on seperate channels, isn't it said that IDE can olnt access one device per channel at any one time? I think that's it...

 

[Cosmic_Horror]

basically put the devices that will be transfering data to each other the most on sperate channels..

basically i would try

ide 1 -hard drive (master) (running everything from this drive)
ide2 - hard drive (master) (stroage)
ide2 - DVD (slave)

this assumes you will be transfering more data between the hard drives and between the first hard drive and the dvd rather than between the dvd and the second hard drive.

note howver that going the above route the second hard drive witll default to the speed of the dvd (eg back to ata/33 or ata/66, which usually isn't a problem because no hard drive even reaches ata/66 burst rates)

otherwise put the hard drive on the same channel and and dvd sperate.

 

[Whitedog]

Always keep CDROM/DVD drives on a seperate channel than Hard drives... rule by default. What C_H said.