Hard drive and CD-ROM on the same IDE controller

[Supermercado]

I've got 2 IDE controllers and 4 IDE devices in one of my machines. 3 hard drives and a CD-RW. Outside of buying a PCI controller card, there's no way to get around having one of the hard drives and the CD-RW on the controller card. I know it's not the best solution, but it's all I can do right now. Problem is, in the 2 days that I've had the hard drive in the machine (it's a new drive, not the system drive, just used for storing things), I've had 2 hard locks where I can't even CTRL-ALT-DEL and restart. I have to hit the power button to shut it off.

Right now, I think the CD-ROM is the master and the hard drive the slave... Would it make a difference if I swapped those two around and made the hard drive the master? Or is there something else I'm missing, outside of getting a new controller, which isn't totally out of the question at some point. As far as the computer goes, the speed loss from having the two devices on the same controller isn't important. It's just my local music server. But having the machine be stable is.

Thanks in advance for any input anyone can give me.

 

[Matthias99]

Right now, I think the CD-ROM is the master and the hard drive the slave... Would it make a difference if I swapped those two around and made the hard drive the master?

I'd try that first. Many ATAPI devices don't handle being a master very well.

 

[HardcoreRobot]

ive never had any problems with any configuration, nor noticed any speed issues

what makes you say CD-ROM plus HDD on the same channel is a problem?

 

[CraigRT]

Originally posted by: HardcoreRobot
ive never had any problems with any configuration, nor noticed any speed issues

what makes you say CD-ROM plus HDD on the same channel is a problem?

The only time you'd notice a speed issue would be copying large files from one hdd to the other, on the same chain, in a master/slave setup.

I run my 2 optical drives each as master on the main motherboard 2 channels, and i run my hard drive on an IDE controller card as master.

each drive in my system is a master, and it works great.

 

[Supermercado]

Originally posted by: HardcoreRobot
ive never had any problems with any configuration, nor noticed any speed issues

what makes you say CD-ROM plus HDD on the same channel is a problem?

Well, I don't know that for sure. But I've heard that having a CD-ROM and HDD on the same channel is a problem. This was several years ago. I've also heard that doing that now isn't as much of a consideration that it used to be. I made two changes to the machine when I added the hard drive. I changed the channel that one of the 2 previous drives was on to the same channel as my CD-ROM and put the new drive on the primary controller with the system drive. I also replaced the PCI 802.11b card with a PCI 802.11g card. I suppose it's possible that the new wireless card is the cause, but my guess is that it's somehow related to the hard drives.

Matthias99: I'll try making the hard drive the master and the CD-ROM the slave later this afternoon and see if that makes any difference. You said that many ATAPI devices have trouble being the master? In all my machines (and the problem one before I made the changes), I had 2 hard drives and 2 optical drives, both on their separate chains, so I've always had some sort of ATAPI device as a master and never had any problems before. Or is that a potential issue only when both devices on the chain aren't ATAPI?

Thanks for the replies so far, guys.

Edit: I'm also getting an MRxSmb error in the Event Viewer, which looks to be somehow network-related. I'm investigating that error right now to see if it might actually be the problem. Anyone know anything right offhand about MRxSmb?

 

[Matthias99]

Originally posted by: SuperCommando
Matthias99: I'll try making the hard drive the master and the CD-ROM the slave later this afternoon and see if that makes any difference. You said that many ATAPI devices have trouble being the master? In all my machines (and the problem one before I made the changes), I had 2 hard drives and 2 optical drives, both on their separate chains, so I've always had some sort of ATAPI device as a master and never had any problems before. Or is that a potential issue only when both devices on the chain aren't ATAPI?

I've seen people with issues with two ATAPI devices on one channel, where they fixed it just by flipping which device was the master and slave. Perhaps "many" was a bit strong, but apparently some older/cheaper optical drives just do not handle all of the ATA bus mastering protocols properly. It's certainly worth a shot before buying another controller card!

 

[Supermercado]

Originally posted by: Matthias99
I've seen people with issues with two ATAPI devices on one channel, where they fixed it just by flipping which device was the master and slave. Perhaps "many" was a bit strong, but apparently some older/cheaper optical drives just do not handle all of the ATA bus mastering protocols properly. It's certainly worth a shot before buying another controller card!

Oh, definitely. I'll give putting the hard drive as the master a shot and see if I have any more problems.

 

[LTC8K6]

I have never had any speed issues with an optical drive and a hard drive on the same channel. Then again, I never make the optical the master.

 

[TStep]

Would not the transfer rate of the harddrive be limited to that of the CDRW? I was always under the impression if two devices are on the same channel, the speed is limited to the speed of the slower device.

 

[Brian23]

I had a simmilar problem one time. I added a 3rd HD to my pc and it became unstable. It turned out that having 4 drives on the IDE channels loaded the bus down enough that the system was no longer stable at 83MHz FSB. I clocked it back to 66MHz FSB and it worked great.

If you're overclocking at all, then I would try setting it back to stock speed and see what happens.

 

[Hurricane Andrew]

Originally posted by: TStep
Would not the transfer rate of the harddrive be limited to that of the CDRW? I was always under the impression if two devices are on the same channel, the speed is limited to the speed of the slower device.

For many older boards, that was true. Today, however, most on-board IDE controllers and PCI cards support independant device timing, so the speed is not limited by the slowest device on the cable.

 

[Supermercado]

Originally posted by: Brian23
I had a simmilar problem one time. I added a 3rd HD to my pc and it became unstable. It turned out that having 4 drives on the IDE channels loaded the bus down enough that the system was no longer stable at 83MHz FSB. I clocked it back to 66MHz FSB and it worked great.

If you're overclocking at all, then I would try setting it back to stock speed and see what happens.

Hmmm, no I'm not overclocking. I've never overclocked any of my machines.

I'm waiting for a file transfer from one of my friends to complete and then I'll try changing the order of the CD-ROM and hard drive and see if that makes any difference.

 

[LTC8K6]

It would have to be a pretty old board for the IDE channels to affect each other's speed.

The exception to this is PIO. A drive that is in PIO mode will drag the other drive, and the computer, down with it.

For the best speed, you want to try to arrange it so that file transfers occur across channels, not on the same channel. Only 1 IDE device can talk at a time on each channel. File transfers between channels are faster than transfers between drives on the same channel.

If you copy CD's a lot, for example, you'd want the source and destination on different channels for the fastest copying.

The ideal situation for IDE is to have only one drive per channel. If you get a PCI IDE card, you can do this with 4 drives.

 

[Supermercado]

Well, I tried putting the hard drive as the master and the CD-ROM as the slave and that looks like it's failed miserably... I woke up this morning and the computer was hardlocked again. I checked the Event Viewer log and since about the time that I swapped the hard drive and CD-ROM, there's been several disk and atapi errors. The text of these errors is:

EventID: 11, The driver detected a controller error on \Device\Harddisk2\D
EventID: 5, A parity error was detected on \Device\Ide\IdePort1

After a little bit of quick googling, it appears that EventID 11 is one of the signs of a bad hard drive. Does anyone have any experience with that? If that's the case, then it's going back to Best Buy today. That will be the fastest that a drive has ever died on me if it's about to go.

Also, there's no sign at all that the new wireless card is at fault here as far as I can tell. All I really know to do is check and make sure there's not any IRQ conflicts; there's not. With the appearance of the above EventIDs, it makes me think that the hard drive is somehow to blame. Is that what the general consensus is? And if so, is my only option really is to take it back to the store or can I run some sort of diagnostic to repair any problems?

Thanks again for reading and thanks for any help anyone can provide.

 

[TStep]

Originally posted by: Hurricane Andrew

Originally posted by: TStep
Would not the transfer rate of the harddrive be limited to that of the CDRW? I was always under the impression if two devices are on the same channel, the speed is limited to the speed of the slower device.

For many older boards, that was true. Today, however, most on-board IDE controllers and PCI cards support independant device timing, so the speed is not limited by the slowest device on the cable.

For years I've been planning device connections around this apparent misconception. Geez, I gotta get up with the times! Good thing I don't slap comps together for a living.

For future reference, what chipset era did this change occur?

 

[Hardlin]

On your MRxSMB error, did you get an error code to go with it (i.e. 3034)? The MRxSMB is the secure mini-redirector for Windows networks.

 

[Supermercado]

Hardlin: I sure did. It's 8003. I don't really know exactly what that is. I saw that it made reference to my laptop (by it's computer name), but I don't know what to make of it. Is it possible that the MRxSmb errors are causing the problems? With just a little bit of googling, it looks to me like the EventID 11 and 5 are more serious. If it makes any difference, there's about 5 times as many 11s as there are 5s.

 

[daniel49]

heres a thought try just running one device on the secondary ide at a time and see if it makes a difference. I would suggest disconnecting the hd first. If freeze up stops there is your problem. My first (and last )hard drive I bought from best buy lasted a month. Normally that configuration you have should not be a problem, unless perhaps your under powered what size power supply you have? If that makes no difference you could temporarily take both devices off secondary and run it empty. If freeze up continues then the only thing left is your PCI 802.11g card. As it was your only other change.

key is to isolate and try one thing at a time.

 

[Supermercado]

daniel49: Good idea. I'll try to isolate the problem by removing the hard drive from the chain and putting the CD-ROM back as the only drive on the chain and see if that makes a difference. Before I made any upgrades to the machine, that was the configuration I had (with a PCI 802.11b card instead of the 11g) and had never had any stability issues. Based on that and the fact that those errors all seem to be pointing to the hard drive that I added, my guess is that the hard drive is about to kick the bucket.

As for the power supply, it may be undersized, but I've run 4 IDE devices in the machine before now with no problems. Never 3 hard drives, though. It's always been 2 hard drives and 2 CD/DVD drives. Would 3 hard drives and 1 CD-ROM draw that much more power than 2 and 2? The one extra hard drive gets a lot more use than the either of the CD/DVD devices ever did. I think the power supply is a no-name 250-watt that came with the machine when I bought it (it was a custom-built machine from a local computer shop 4 1/2 years ago). I suppose it's entirely possible that the power supply could be the problem.

If the power supply does end up being the problem, how interchangeable are PSUs? When I built my P4 system last year, the case I got came with a 400-watt unit, I think. I bought an Antec to replace the unit that came with the case and I still have that around here somewhere. Would that be able to be used in my old P3 system (this is the one that's the problem machine right now)?

 

[Accord99]

Originally posted by: TStep
For future reference, what chipset era did this change occur?

No later than the 430HX.

 

[TStep]

Thanks Accord, I've been screwed up for about 10 years then Getting old I guess.

 

[daniel49]

try the harddrive first but if you ran 4 ide before probably would run it again although I have to think once a person gets four ide devices and probably every pci and a agp slot filled you may be pushing the line at 250w???

well heres the thing about power supplies
if it was made by someone like compaq or dell its probably proprietary and not atx standard so for instance if you had a compaq board and a compaq power supply just sticking an atx power supply in there would probably not work.

also earlier atx power supplies will not have the 12v plug that newer motherboards require for the graphics card. If your mb requires that plug any power supply you swap out will need that and it is standard on all newer ps.

 

[Supermercado]

daniel49: Actually, I think the only PCI devices in this machine are the wireless NIC and the wired NIC. The wired NIC is totally disabled, so does that even draw power at all? And the video card is AGP. I think there's 5 total PCI slots.

Nope, it's not proprietary at all. I didn't actually build the system myself; it was built by a local shop here in town. So for all intents and purposes, it's a regular home-built system. It shouldn't have any proprietary things in it at all.

The graphics card is relatively old (GeForce 2 Ti) and the motherboard is a Pentium 3 board (it's an 800MHz machine). The power supply is much newer than any of those components, so if I can find it, I should be able to swap it out, right? They're both generic units and neither are probably great. But it's better to have a 400W generic than a 250W generic I assume.

 

[daniel49]

yes would be worth a ty if your still having problems but try hd first remember one thing at a time keep it simple

 

[Zepper]

I was under the impression that the drives had to support at least 33MHz (UDMA) to not drag down the channel. Anything slower (e.g. PIO or DMA-2) could slow the channel.
.bh.