Building New System - questions about IDE channels.

[The Stigenator]

The new system I am building is a AMD 1.4 Ghz proc. I am putting a new 20GB Maxtor hdd as my primary hard drive. This one is ATA 100, and my backup drive 30gb western digiral 5400 drive is also ATA100 I am going to put in my DVD rom and CDRW in this system (though I am not sure of teh CDRW - its a 2x Burner but it is useful in copying those occasional hard cd's).

Question is, how do I set the channels up so I dont get a slow down. If I mix ATA100, and ATA33, will it slow down that channel to ATA 33 speeds even if you use ATA 100 cables?

I am thinking possibly the old setting of
20Gb / DVD
30 GB / CDRW

will that work or should i make it
20 GB / 30 GB
DVD / CDRW

Which will be idea for speed. Either way dvd ripping and MP3 compression is optimisd as its on seperate channels ( I use the DVD for ripping). The second option looks tempting to me. should I go that way?

thanks

TGG

 

[The Stigenator]

ttt

 

[The Stigenator]

come on people...

 

[TheGreenGoblin]

If you put the CDROM and CDR on the same channel you may have problems with " on the fly " copies , though if that's not an issue , it'll be fine.

 

[Heisenberg]

The IDE channel will always slow down to the slowest drive speed, even with 80-pin cables. You shouldn't have too much of a problem with the burner and DVD on the same channel if it's only a 2x. I would make the burner the master though.

 

[Om]

No it won't slow it down if the dives are on the same IDE channel, on older boards it use to drag the speed down to the slowest drive. However, if you plan on transfering files between the two HDDs it's not the greatest idea to have them both on the same channel. I'd suggest that you put the Burner on the same channel with the HDD that you won't be doing much burning from, otherwise you could run into problems. So looks like your first choice is a good one.

 

[dunkster]

Consider adding an IDE controller card (Promise, etc.) to provide two additional IDE channels ($30 to $40).

This would allow using all devices as masters on their own discrete IDE channel for max efficiency.

I chose a RAID mobo for my last upgrade for this reason, with no intent to use any RAID mode, but for the additional IDE channels.

Hope this helps!