CD Burner + Harddrive on same IDE cable?

[tnguyen88]

For years I've been putting my CD rom and Hard Drives on seperate IDE channels. Is there any real advantage to this? What're the disadvantages of having them both on the same channel?

 

[Ravenit]

Older systems had problems with burners and hard drives on the same cable as the motherboard had to get info from the hd and then write it to the burner when the channel was free.
Now days with buffer zones and transfer rates upthere its not so much of a problem but they still recomend the burner and hd to be on different ide slots

 

[DeviousTrap]

It does not have anything to do with the buffer, the main reason they recommend seperate channles is that way they could run at their native speed. 99% of CD-RW drives are ATA/33 so when put on the same IDE channel as a hardrive that hardrive will be forsted to run at ATA33 instead of ATA100/133.

 

[tnguyen88]

Originally posted by: computer89
It does not have anything to do with the buffer, the main reason they recommend seperate channles is that way they could run at their native speed. 99% of CD-RW drives are ATA/33 so when put on the same IDE channel as a hardrive that hardrive will be forsted to run at ATA33 instead of ATA100/133.

Ahh, I didn't even think about that. It's one of those things that's so obvious that I didn't even think of it.

 

[stevewm]

Originally posted by: computer89
It does not have anything to do with the buffer, the main reason they recommend seperate channles is that way they could run at their native speed. 99% of CD-RW drives are ATA/33 so when put on the same IDE channel as a hardrive that hardrive will be forsted to run at ATA33 instead of ATA100/133.

Unless you are using a motherboard with first generation IDE controllers then this is NOT TRUE!!!


All motherboards these days support what is called independent timing. This allows each device to run at its highest supported speed regardless of the other device on the channel. So a ATA100 device and a ATA33 device mixed together on the same channel will result in a ATA100 device running at ATA100 and the ATA33 device at ATA33!

Now while it is true only one device on the channel can transfer data at a time this is not a big a issue as many make it out to be. Each device will only transfer a few bytes during each request. Try it for yourself. Time how long it takes to copy one file from hardrive to hardrive with them both on the same channel and then with both of them on different channels. You'll notice only a 3-4 second difference. Now optical drives (CD-RW drives for example) transfer at such a slow rate (6MB/sec maximum!) to begin with having both a HD and a CD-RW on the same channel is NOT A ISSUE as long as both devices are in one of the many DMA modes!

Arrange your IDE devices in whatever manner is easiest for you.

 

[tnguyen88]

Hmmm interesting. I have a shuttle XPC with a NForce2 chipset, so I'm trying to cut back on the cables in the case. Things get pretty tight in there. I guess I'm gonna have to try things out and see how it goes. I just wanted to make sure that It wouldn't make things so slow that it was unbearable.