2 HD's DVD and a CDRW what's the best setup?

[Twister00]

I am going to add another HD to my computer. (Adding the WD 40GB drive)

I have: 30GB Maxtor 7200 ATA100 drive
40GB WD 7200 ATA100 drive
DVD Toshiba 16x ATA33 drive
10x4x32 Acer CDRW PIO 4 burner

I will be doing a clean install of Windows 2000 Pro on a PIII 1Ghz PC with 512MB RAM. Motherboard controller supports ATA100.

I checked the FAQ's and did a search and didn't see anything that gave me a clear answer.

Any help would be appreciated

Twister

 

[RSMemphis]

Here is my suggestion:

IDE -1 : Master: Boot/System HD (I hope the 40 GB, since it is probably the faster one)
IDE -1 : Slave: I like to have the CD Burner there, because one is more likely to use the 2nd HD as data storage from which to burn

IDE -2 : Master: Data HD
IDE -2 : Slave: DVD

If you want to copy CD's on the fly, the most important part is to separate the CD-RW and the DVD, as shown above.
The rest is a matter of taste.

 

[Brian48]

I recommend having both HDDs on IDE1 since they're both ATA100 compliant, with the DVD as S.Master on IDE2 and the burner slaved to it. Being able to burn on-the-fly is not normally recommended anyway and I certainly don't see the use of slowing down your HDDs by slaving these older devices onto it for this one advantage.

 

[Twister00]

Thanks...that makes sense

 

[Salvador]

Get yourself a separate ATA100 controller card and run your hdd's off of it and then run your dvd and cd burner on their own IDE channels off of the mobo.

Sal

 

[Twister00]

Any thoughts on Salvador's suggestion? I actually have a Maxtor ATA 100 card that I could use.

 

[Paulson]

There's no point in doing that if you already have an ATA/100 capable mobo...

 

[ScrapSilicon]

<< Any thoughts on Salvador's suggestion? I actually have a Maxtor ATA 100 card that I could use. >>

IDE 0= HD 40 Master HD30 Slave ...IDE 1 depends on the speed of DVD and CDRWriter have here 16xDVD LiteonLTD163 as Master and Liteon LTR-16102B as Slave ....burn on the fly=no coasters ...you can sell the ATA100 card to someone who's on Ultra33 or lower....

 

[Basse]

Utilizing ATA100 doesn't justify having both HDDs on the same controller. The "parallelism" of today's IDE standard certainly slows down file transfers between the 2 drives if you have them on the same controller.

I highly recommend RSMemphis's suggestion for the reasons he stated, plus the fact that disk-to-disk transfers will be faster.

Reg
B

 

[Twister00]

Thanks for all the suggestions....each one seems to have at least some validity to it.

 

[Basie]

Another Vote for RS Memphis suggestion. Though if you can free a IRQ I would try the Maxtor ATA Card
also.