Ideal hard disk and optical drive configuration

[athlon64X2]

Hi,

I have put together my system and it has been running fine. But I never paid attention to how I am connecting my storage devices when I built it. I have 2 hard disks (one system, one data) and 2 optical drives (CD/RW DVD ROM and DVD RW). Current configuration is as follows:

IDE Channel 0 (Primary), Master : CD/RW DVD ROM
IDE Channel 0 (Primary), Slave: DVD/RW
IDE Channel 1: None
IDE Channel 2 Master: 160GB Sata 2, System (OS) hard disk
IDE Channel 3 Master: 80 GB Sata 2, Data hard disk
IDE Channel 4: None
IDE Channel 5: None

My question is whether I can move around the devices to make the configuration optimal? I have heard that ideally hard disks should be connected on the Primary Channel (0) as Master and Slave. And optical drives should be connected to the subsequent channels. Is this true? If so, what will I achieve by changing the above configuration and moving my HDDs to primary channel?

Thanks in advance,
Mahesh

 

[DLM]

I have heard that ideally hard disks should be connected on the Primary Channel (0) as Master and Slave. And optical drives should be connected to the subsequent channels.

that i've never heard, i have heard it's best not to have both your optical drives on the same channel though. So when i build a rig i put each optical drive as a master on each of the PATA connectors and then i use my SATA sockets for my hdd's. That way there is no conflict, especially since you can set you boot order in your BIOS.

 

[Paperdoc]

I hooked mine up that way, too - two DVD-RW drives as masters on separate IDE channels, and HDD's on SATA connections. Although sharing one IDE channel between 2 optical drives should NOT cause conflicts, some people believe that the two may run faster on occasions when you are using both simultaneously, as in copying. Some day I'll get around to testing that hypothesis, but for now I put the DVD's on separate IDE channels.

 

[Seekermeister]

My motherboard recommends connecting the PATA HDs to the primary connector, but since you have none, that wouldn't be a factor. The optical drives would perform better on separate connectors, so I would probably connect them to the primary and secondary connectors separately. Since they would be on different channels, I would probably set both of them as masters. However, I have not tried this, because my connectors are full and I have no options...until my SATA/PATA controller card arrives.