• We’re currently investigating an issue related to the forum theme and styling that is impacting page layout and visual formatting. The problem has been identified, and we are actively working on a resolution. There is no impact to user data or functionality, this is strictly a front-end display issue. We’ll post an update once the fix has been deployed. Thanks for your patience while we get this sorted.

IDE channel configurations

K

KiltedFool

Senior member
Greetings.

I'm setting up my wife's computer to do some light video editing to turn Mini DV camcorder baby footage into burned DVDs that can then be sent to the grandparents.

Her comp is a Shuttle MN31N with an XP 2100+ in Xp Pro. I'll be putting 1 GB of memory in.

She's got a CD-Rom, a CD burner, and a Seagate 80 GB drive in right now. I'm adding a second Seagate 80 GB and an NEC 3500A DVD burner. Built in a Sonata, no overclocking.

I assume I pull the CD Rom for the DVD burner, one's ASUS one's Lite-On.

What configuration of IDE channels will make the most sense or give the most performance? I do not plan to use RAID in any form.

If it makes sense and I can do it cheaply I'm not allergic to buying a PCI IDE controller card.

I'm assuming I'll have to get her a real video card at some point, or give her my second comp's BFG Ti4600 and upgrade mine.

I'll be installing Pinnacle Studio Plus 9 and Roxio Easy CD DVD Creator 6, should they be installed on the boot drive or the secondary? Apparently the Pinnacle book says something about it slowing down with Windows.

Thanks, sorry so longwinded.
KF
 
I'd say put the harddrive as a single drive on IDE 0 (or 1 however your mb numbers it)
Then burner on master and cd-rom on slave for IDE 1 (or 2)

EDIT: oh crap, I misread. uhhh....

Now I'd say IDE 0 Put the two harddrives on that one as master + slave

IDE 1 put the DVD burner on master and the CD burner on slave
 
I read a review some months ago that tested some pci IDE cards. It seems the ones tested gave more throughput than putting on an IDE channel.
Anyway,

PRIMARY MASTER hdd [OS and progs]
PRIMARY SLAVE hdd [data]
Secondary master DVDRW

as a guess, this would work better for you - don't put the dvdrw on the same channel as the data that you are copying.
 
Well, got everything set up and Mrs. Fool started screwing with things.

The data drive is on primary slave, but when she goes to capture data from the camcorder, it does a scan to see what data rate the drive can handle, and comes back saying something along the lines of "this drive can only handle 3700 KB/S which isn't fast enough to capture".

The primary drive, which is OS and program, is primary master, and the exact same drive, it tests out to roughly an order of magnitude higher data rate, and can be captured to.

What would cause this drive to be running so much slower? I'm assuming it's a settings or config issue.

I notice when I show properties under device manager both drives have SCSI in their names, but they're IDE drives.

Install was slightly annoying until I ran the seagate disk utility, then it installed properly and it shows up in My Computer. Though interestingly enough, I don't think I see it on the POST screen when I start up, though it flashes by pretty quickly, and does show up if I DEL into CMOS.

May be a moot point, I thought she was into her second tape worth of footage, no she's already onto her 5th tape, long term I see 1-2 large drives in the 200 GB range and a promise controller.

And if running OS on the same channel slows down the secondary, I don't have a problem getting 1 or 2 controller cards, she uses virtually no PCI slots as it is.

 
I'm having trouble finding a place to enable it in Win XP.

I'm on my comp right now, she's working on hers atm, but I went digging around in the IDE controllers for my machine, it's an Epox 8RDA+ and I have the same trouble finding a DMA enabling checkbox.

Went to the nVidia IDE controller and asked it to update the driver, it went to MS website and found an updated version which covers primary and secondary, I allowed it to install and rebooted. Then when I went back in I had Primary and Secondary Channel line items, as well as the controller itself, and in Advanced Properties I could enable DMA.

I'll try the same thing on hers, hers is an nForce 2 board too, the primary drive is likely DMA enabled, but it looks like the nVidia IDE controller may not display or cover the secondary as explicitly as I'd like.

Booting her off now to check..

The POST screen only shows 3 of the drives in that split second between memory test and the next screen.

Will check her controllers and reboot, see if there's a setting in the CMOS I can use.
 
Ok, I just found that the secondary hadn't been enabled in SETUP, so I turned it on and rebooted, then used the software to test the data rate again, and it's now 22k KB/s reading and 56k KB/s writing, compared to the primary being set at 33k/34k.

I also updated to the MS standard IDE controller and will reboot again.

I noticed in SETUP something like this:

Primary Master (None/Auto/Manual)
Access Mode (CHS/LBA/Large/Auto)

I don't know what CHS and LBA mean, or what use the Large setting would be, do they help performance? The Primary slave was set to none, now it's auto.

All my drives on both systems are now set to Auto/Auto, is that the best approach?

Thanks
KF


edit:
After updating the IDE controller on her comp, I retested capture rate.

Primary drive is 22k read 34k write, secondary is 55k/56k

So she now can capture to that drive successfully, now I have to go find some good media and brace myself for putting in more HDs and a promise card.
 
I liked the bit about Mrs Fool screwing up. Mine used to be a programmer though you would never know it.
I set up video machines with
ide0 master-cdrive progs only
ide0 slave-dvd player
ide1 master 120gig single partition video data drives ( in removable mobile trays)
ide1 slave plextor dvd+/- writer (BTW all works fine even without a drive in ide1 master)
promise ide card (about $20.00)
ide 0 + 1 mobile racks for 4 more mobile hdrive trays

All hdrives are set to auto and run at ultradma mode 5
All optical drives are set to auto and run at ultradma mode 2
Don't remember and don't care about the transfer rates but they are the fastest for the drives anyway. Have absolutely no problems with the video process.
Check your drive specs and if they are set to their max, then it is the best you can do.
Supposedly, the best setup is to have all drives as masters obviously on separate channels.
There are less bloated progs to use but if yours do the job stick with them. With video, eliminating the bloat is key.
Look at this site for all the video info you'll ever need.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

Back
Top