Adding cdrw to HDD cable ?

[OzMowerman]

Hi, is it ok to put a new cdrw on the same cable as the HDD ?, all the parts are new, motherboard is a Gigabyte GA-8IHXP, the cdrw is an Asus 4816A 48X Write/ 16X Rewrite/ 48X Read , the HDD is a WD120gig.
some one said that putting it on the same cable as the HDD will slow it down,
and another said thats bullcrap, and that it wont effect it at all because that only was with old gear.
does anyone here know for sure what the go is ?

I have been serching around the net, but unsure where to look for definitive answers on this.

Regards Kevin.
Ps, i cannot use the second ide controller(just incase you suggest that)

 

[Feisters]

You can slave the cdrw to the hdd on ide primary and not experience any degradation of performance of each device individually. The slow down occurs when transfering data between devices on the same ide channel. I assume you already have hard drives on the secondary ide channel. If you're not going to be doing much data transfering between the cdrw and hdd on ide primary, I'd say go for it. Otherwise, I'd try to get that cdrw on ide secondary. In other words, place the hard drive your going to be doing the most data transfer with the cdrw on a seperate ide channel. If the transfers are farily even across all your hard drives and the cdrw, then it's really a moot point.