4 IDE devices on 2 channels (master/slave) or 4 channels?

[anazoal]

I have a 4G4A+ with built-in RAID that can be set as two extra IDE channels. Will I see a perfromance boost if I put each of my 2 HD's, DVD, and CDRW on a seperate channel? Won't I get better throughput ripping a CD now that the DVD & CDRW are each in a seperate channel?

Thanks.

 

[J3anyus]

Yeah, having everything on its own channel theoretically increases throughput. If you've got 2 HDDs and a RAID controller, why don't you just RAID the drives together to make things uber-fast?

 

[crapito]

anazoal: I have the same exact setup. my CDRW and DVD each get their own IDE channel from the motherboard outputs, while my HDDs each get a separate IDE channel from the HP372 RAID controller. I don't use RAID, of course, but I do take advantage of the extra 2 IDE ports. sharing ports sucks and should only be used if you have no free channels available. on my current system, there is much less annoying slowdown when copying cds and the like than when all 4 drives were on the 2 IDE channels on my previous Abit BG7 motherboard. granted, either way gives good, clean, non-corrupted data, but separate channels are better for snappier performance.

 

[anazoal]

I went with each device on a seperate IDE channel. I'll set up RAID when I get a 3rd HD and use the stripped HD's for video editing.

crapito... yep the 4g4A+ thread. What a great board!!! BTW, after installing the EPoX RAID utility (not useful in my setup, but I wanted to see what it does) I found out my WD HD was running at ATA 33... So the diskette WD give you does have a use.

 

[nemo160]

the reason each device on its own channel is better is that only one device on an ide channel can read or write at a time
so say dvd and cdrw on same channel as master/slave:
dvd read
cdrw write
different channel:
dvdread-cdrw write
less time waiting for the bus to free up so better performance
if you're going to go raid 0 later, use two of the exact same hd, otherwise performance and utilization can suffer..i.i: i wouldn't mix a wd 40 gig and maxtor 40 gig in a raid 0 for ideal performance, even though they're the same size