Multiple IDE Drive Arrangement (HD,DVD,CDRW)

[SFGuy]

What is the optimal arrangement when you have multiple IDE controllers and drives (HD's, DVD-ROM, CDRW)?

Here's my scenario. I'm buying a new HD (Maxtor ATA 100) and an add-on PCI ATA100 controller. I already have 2 built-in IDE channels on mobo.

1 Maxtor ATA 100 IDE controller
2 mobo IDE controllers (not sure if they are ATA 33 or ATA 66)
1 HD 7200RPM ATA100
1 HD 7200RPM ATA66
1 HD 5400RPM ATA33
16x DVD-ROM
4x2x24 CDRW

I may just salvage the 5400RPM drive and give it to my brother. Which should be slaves and masters? I heard that you shouldn't put both HD's on one controller because a HD to HD data transfer on one controller is much slower than between two controllers.

Thanks for any insight you can give me (and the others on this forum)

 

[Noriaki]

<< I heard that you shouldn't put both HD's on one controller because a HD to HD data transfer on one controller is much slower than between two controllers. >>

That would be channel not controller

Each controller has two channels, and if you put each drive on it's own channel it doesn't matter if it's the same controller or not.

IDE is very ineffecient at communicating with both drives on the same chain at the same time. So don't put two devices you communicate with at the same time on the same chain.

But if you put one hard drive on each channel of the ATA100 card that would work fine.

I have

Promise Ultra100:
Primary Master: Main Hard drive
Primary Slave: Empty
Secondary Master: Second Hard drive
Secondary Slave:

Them my motherboard controller is CD drives and my Zip drive.

 

[SFGuy]

bump

 

[Quickfingerz]

Put the two 7200 rpm hard drives on the two diff PCI channels and put OS on one hard drive and run swap on the other. If you are using 256 mb of ram it may not matter too much.