IDE channel arrangement question

[Demon-Xanth]

I have the following drives that are going to be all at home in my systems:
Pioneer 110D (DVD-RW, ATA66)
NEC 5800C (DVD-ROM, ATA33)
Seagate 7200.7 (160GB, ATA100)
Seagate 7200.9 (120GB, ATA100)

Normally, I'd say put the HDs on one channel, and the DVDs on the other. But the 160 has the OS and programs and all that, and I want to use the 120 for recording video, and currently if I do anything on the system the HD usage causes frames to get dropped (I'm also gonna be upgrading to a dual core CPU, so the CPU won't be an issue).

Would it be best to put the Pioneer and the 160 on one channel and the NEC and 120 on the other? Or some other arrangement. The goal here is to try to keep bus contention down.

 

[snoturtle]

hard drives on one channel
dvd's on the other

which is a pita

only suggestion would be to pick up a ATA pci card

 

[RebateMonger]

With modern IDE systems, it's best to put the hard drives on separate channels. The need to put hard drives on separate channels from CD/DVD drives went away several years ago. You can only access one drive at a tme on a particular IDE channel, so running two hard drives on the same channel will really slow down simultaneous access to the two hard drives.

 

[allanon1965]

I too went thru this hassle a few months ago...I ended up just building another cheap setup for editing videos and converting vhs to dvd and such, cost me under 400 and now I dont have any issues with dropped frames and such, also I can do whatever I want on my main rig my video rig is a simple setup, Sempron 64 3000+, 1 GB ddr, 60 gb hd, onboard video,sound,lan,etc....a plextor convert-x box, uses USB 2.0 connections and my trusty old vcr...composite connections and s-video....my conversions look as good as store bought dvd's....no more headaches! well worth it for me...

 

[SparkyJJO]

60gb HD? :Q you must do low level video stuff, my bro has a 120GB and 160GB for video and he keeps running out of space

 

[Zepper]

If you aren't interested in getting a PCI card (I use SiliconImage based Syba at less than $20. shipped here) to add two channels so each drive can have its own (best oveall performance), then put one HD (primary) and one optical drive (secondary) on each channel. You may have to play around with arrangement of the optical drives to see which plays best with which HD on the same channel or maybe put the optical as primary and HD as second on the secondary IDE channel.
. Or if you have some SATA channels that aren't being used then you could convert some of your IDE drives to SATA. Once again the Syba converter that tucks neatly out of the way works well. All these things are at Newegg and others. You may need a 4-pin large to floppy connector adapter for the IDE > SATA converter as it requires a floppy connector for power and the drive will require power too. A power Y that goes from 1 large male molex to 1 large female molex and 1 female floppy connector would work great - power both off one Molex connector from your PSU.

.bh.

 

[allanon1965]

no I dont do low level video...I dont keep everything I have converted or otherwise finished on the hard drive, wastes unnecessary space.....why save it on the hard drive if its done? its burned to dvd and then deleted. I save a master copy of all of them so I am covered in the event of one being destroyed or lost...

 

[Demon-Xanth]

Only problem with going to SATA bridges is that they cost money. And I've already spent more than I should have. The board that I'm upgrading to has 8 ports, so making those available wouldn't be a problem.

 

[Zepper]

Well, just try one of each on each channel then for a while and see if it's workable. If not then you have the other options available. You'll probably need to stack them one above the other in the 5" bays for standard cables to work easily.

.bh.

 

[Demon-Xanth]

Just checked, the cables reach in a perfect length almost beautiful way. Being that they're rounded, they'll wrap around eachother nicely. Now when my vidcard comes in I get to see if I have to reinstall Win2k to handle the dual core vs. single core. Ahh, that'll be fun.

 

[Demon-Xanth]

Thanks for the replies, I got it all setup last night and tested it. Captured 720x480 w/ a BT878 card w/o dropping frames while opening a browser and stuff.

IDE 1 primary: 160GB HD (everything but capture)
IDE 1 secondary: DVD-ROM
IDE 2 primary: 120GB (only capture)
IDE 2 secondary: DVD-RW (since I'm really unlikely to ever burn a disk while capturing)