How should I arrange these IDE devices?

[DarrylLicke]

1 - 40 gig 60GXP
1 - 40 gig 75GXP(soon to RMAed after I do a DFT....regardless it will be HD)
1 - Pioneer 16x DVD
1 - Plextor CDRW

The whole primary slave secondary stuff confuses me.

 

[sohcrates]

You usually want your HDD's to be master on their own channels. So make your boot disk primary master and your secondary hard disk secondary master.

As far as the cd-rw and dvd, not sure if there's a definitive answer...though lots of people have opinions on this kind of stuff. Do some keyword searches on these forums for similar topics to yours and you're sure to find lots of posts with questions like this

 

[jacklutz]

I would set the CDRW as master with the DVD as slave on one channel, and the 40GB 60GXP as master on its own channel, the 75GXP slave for however long you have it.

Be sure to get your jumpers right.

 

[zetter]

I'd put it like this

Primary Master - 40 gig 60GXP
Primary Slave - Pioneer 16x DVD
Secondary Master - 40 gig 75GXP
Secondary Slave - Plextor CDRW

Unless the majority of the stuff you're burning is from the 2nd hard disk, in which case, swap the two slaves around the other way.

 

[ucla88]

problem is, there's no perfect way to do it. the important thing to keep in mind is that only one device on a channel can be active at any given time. so, if you're doing something in photoshop, which benefits from a scratch disk, well, it won't really help if the scratch disk is on the same ide channel because you can't access both hdd's anyway. hence the axiom each hdd should have it's own channel.

do they have to be master-well, this is a complicated question. there is no priority, so to speak, of a master device over a slave in terms of controlling the bus, so they are badly named in this respect. master and slave can make a difference to the os, drive letter assignments, etc.

but, if you are only rarely using the 2nd hdd as backup only, and you watch alot of dvds, you could argue to make the dvd the secondary master and put both hdds on the primary ide.

i kind of depends on how you're going to use your hdds, cdr/dvd, and system


sohcrates is right though-do a search and you'll find numerous posts on the subject.