CDROM on ATA100 Card?

[Salvador]

Hi,

I just bought an El Cheapo Emachines to get me by the next few months. I have a 40 gb Maxtor that I just put in it along with an ATA100 card. I have the hdd hooked up to the ATA card, but was wondering if I can hook the cd rom up to the card as well?

If so, what is the best way to hook this up? Should I even bother to hook up a 32x cd rom drive from a 366 Celeron Emachines?

I've installed hdd's before, but never through a controller card.

TIA,

Sal

 

[NelsonMuntz]

What else is in there. Just the CD-ROM? Are you keeping the old hard drive too?If you now have two hard drives and one CD-ROM I would suggest just putting the new drive on the controller card. If you are going to have two hard drives and two CD-ROM devices, then put both hard drives on the controller card and the two CD-ROMs leave on the onboard IDE.

 

[Salvador]

I'm running just a new hdd and the cd rom. I put the hdd on the primary channel of the controller card set to master and then put the cd rom on the secondary IDE channel on the card set to master. So.. I don't have anything on the mobo right now.

Why do you suggest that I keep the cd rom on the mobo? Won't it work better on the ATA100 controller card?

Thanks again,

Sal

 

[technogeeky]

Who makes this card?

I know that Promise Ultra* cards do support ATAPI drives, but FastTrak* ones will not.


However, usually the best way to configure this system would be as such:

[MB IDE 1 MASTER] -> CDROM 1
[MB IDE 1 SLAVE] -> OTHER
[MB IDE 2 MASTER] -> CDROM 2
[MB IDE 2 SLAVE] -> OTHER

[CONT IDE 1 MASTER] -> HDD#1
[CONT IDE 1 SLAVE] -> HDD#3 (if applicable)
[CONT IDE 2 MASTER] -> HDD#2
[CONT IDE 2 SLAVE] -> HDD#1 (if applicable)



As for leaving the CDROM on the controller card or MB - it really wouldn't matter either way. It won't be faster than the MB could support and it would require drivers in your OS to see the CD-ROM if it is on the controller card. For you, it's best to do:

Hard Disk -> Controller Primary Master
CD-ROM -> Motherboard Primary Master

Good luck!

-tg

 

[Noriaki]

Usually RAID controllers are no-no for CD/DVD/Zip type drives. They are Hard Drive Only.

But just a regular IDE controller is fine on any type of Drive.

 

[Salvador]

What I meant about RAID is that you could put your HDD's on the RAID and then that would free up all 4 slots on the mobo for cdrw drives, dvd's, etc..

So.. I'm not going to get any speed advantage on my cd rom by putting it on my ATA controller card? I guess if I'm not going to see any difference, it would probably be easier to put it back on the mobo's primary IDE.

BTW.. The controller card is a ATA100 Maxtor. I believe that it's made by Promise because I see if mentioned in the instructions and packaging.

I bought the controller card because it's free after MIR with the purchase of the Maxtor HDD. I got $5 extra off the HDD by ordering the controller, so I'm really getting the card and $5 after I get the rebate back. Of course, I'd probably get that in interest on a regular savings account by the time that I actually get the MIR.

Anyway.. If you think the best way to go is to put the cd rom back on the mobo, that's the way I will go.

Thanks again,

Sal

 

[Mday]

the card will most likely perform better than the onboard controller from the emachines.

as long as the card is NOT RAID, it's fine. RAID controllers can only control HDDs, not CD-ROMs or whatever you can think of.

even if you only have 2 drives, i would suggest getting the card anyway, especially if you are using a new drive. you can save an IRQ since the card will take up 1 IRQ for both channels, while each channel on the mobo takes up one IRQ.

a new card is a cheap purchase anyway, for $40 (less) at some places.

 

[Salvador]

Hehe.. I already have the card. I got it when I got the hdd. It was a MIR deal to get the card for free with the drive. Glad that you think I should use the card for both the cd rom and hdd. That's what I wanted to do in the first place.

Thanks!

Sal