Cable Select on harddrives

[episodic]

Any drawbacks to cable select on hard drive configurations? I've got a 2 harddrives (one is a 40 gig 7200 Samsung ATA 133). The other is a 20 Gig Maxter (5400 ATA 1000).

I've also bought a Dvd-Rom Player, and I wish to keep the CDRW as well.

I've got everything hooked up and running as expected, I can't help but to wonder is all of this optimal performance wise?


Recap
Primary
Master 40 gig ATA 133 7200
Slave 20 gig ATA 100 5400

Secondary
Master CDRW
Slave DVDROM

All configured with cable select.

Ok?

 

[MDE]

It's fine. Cable select just lets the drives figure out who's master and slave instead of forcing them into one or the other.

 

[corkyg]

Optimizing performance is sometimes like swatting fleas while the camel goes by. 🙂 Benchmarks are nice - often cool - but what counts is the rate at which applications process and the human interface can move with it. I have found that anything over 2.5 GHz exceeds my capacity to work the input devices.

I have used nothing but Cable Select since Win95 - and have had outstanding results. I have had no serious crashes - no blue screens - no HDD failures, etc. Not bragging - it just reflects a high level of maintenance. I maintain my system daily - I scrub my Registry periodically - optimize my drive daily, and have never fallen victime to the youthful panacea called "reformat and start over."

My current hardware requires CSEL - the Romtec Trios II drive selector.

What do I really atribute my success to? That's easy! I don't do games - just work.

 

[JustAnAverageGuy]

The only "downside" I can think of is that you can't turn the cables around so that you hook it up this way

IDE0P - HDD
IDE0S - DVD

IDE1P - HDD
IDE1S - CD-RW

to enable faster HDD--> HDD copying.

It's not really a major disadvantage though.

Personally I just use both HDDs on IDE0 and DVD-RWs on IDE1 with everything else on a PCI IDE controller.

I use Cable Select on every IDE device in my house. I've never had a problem with it.