Hard Drive IDE channels...

[jdreher]

This might seem like a silly question...but...if I am installing 2 hard drives in a machine, is it better to have them on separate IDE channels or should they both be on the same channel...or does it matter at all? I'm going to end up having a CD-RW, DVD drive and 2 hard drives in the system and any recommended IDE channel configurations would be appreciated.

Thanks.

 

[AkumaBao]

Are they the same speed? It would be better to put them together than to put it with a CD-ROM or something.

 

[jdreher]

yeah, they are the same speed...one is a 7200 RPM 40 GB IBM drive and the other is a 7200 RPM 120GB western digital.

 

[Mer]

Your drives are probably both ata100 and your cd-rom drives aren't.

In my opinion (and what I do).. is try to keep the harddrives on a faster channel (the primary) and you cdroms on a slower channel (the secondary).
I have the mobo with one ata100 ide connector and one regular one. So I keep both my 7200rpm drives on the ata100 connector.

Remember... and anyone out there correct me if I'm wrong. But if you have a cdrom and a ata100 drive on the same channel/cable... then the data transfer will be the speed of the slowest drive (your cdrom).

Hope this helps.

Sweetness,
Mer.

 

[4824guy]

It doens't matter that much, unless your accessing or writing between the two devices on the same ide cable. Your probably better to keep the two HD's on ide1 and the 2 cd-r units on ide2. Your performance will only be slowed down when writing or copying between the two HD's. I would put your fastest HD as the one with your OS, the one with the lowest seek time probably.

 

[NelsonMuntz]

<< Your drives are probably both ata100 and your cd-rom drives aren't.

In my opinion (and what I do).. is try to keep the harddrives on a faster channel (the primary) and you cdroms on a slower channel (the secondary).
I have the mobo with one ata100 ide connector and one regular one. So I keep both my 7200rpm drives on the ata100 connector.

Remember... and anyone out there correct me if I'm wrong. But if you have a cdrom and a ata100 drive on the same channel/cable... then the data transfer will be the speed of the slowest drive (your cdrom).

Hope this helps.

Sweetness,
Mer. >>


Okay, don't take this the wrong way, but I am correcting a misconception. In the FAQ on Hard drive interfaces and standards which can be found
here, it says, and I quote:
"You can use a ATA33 drive on a ATA66/100/133 channel and since all current controllers provide independent device timing, they will not affect each other's operation."
With this in mind, the speed of the devices sharing an individual channel doesn't matter. The only thing to look at is whether the sharing devices will have to be accessed at the same time. This happens any time you write from one drive to the other both on the same connection. If you will be writing from one hard drive to the other often, then keep those on separate channels. Keep the CD-RW separate from whatever will be burning to it (CD-ROM or hard drive). After having said all this, I will state that I don't have two hard drives, but I do have four devices on my two IDE channels, and I keep them like this:
Primary Master: Hard Drive
Primary Slave: DVD-ROM
Secondary Master: CD-RW
Secondary Slave: ATAPI ZIP100
this maximizes my ability to burn disks both from my hard drive and "on-the-fly" from my DVD-ROM. If I install a new program to my hard drive that does not need the CD to run for normal use, I use the CD-RW. That's just my $0.02.