Question about IDE Raid

[quincer]

Is it Beneficial to have 3 drives compared to 2 (Both as masters), or will it actually slow down the chain?
I know it doesn't matter for a scsi chain as long as all drives are the same, but I remember something about the slave slowing the master drives or soemthing like that for ide. Uhm I think.


Thanks!
Quincer

 

[Nothinman]

With IDE only one device can use the chain at a time, so if you have 2 drives on one wire and try to use them both at the same time they'll just end up fighting for the wire. I've heard that newer IDE devices can support disconnect like SCSI to avoid this, but you'd need drives, a controller and drivers that support it and I don't think it's very common yet.

 

[WarpSpeed]

I've seen test results that show IDE RAID scaling directly in proportion to the number of drives, up to four. Anandtech has a great article; you should read it.