Should I add a PCI IDE card ?

[CyNics]

I have 2 Hds, one cuda IV 20GB and one 30GB IBM 60GXP, 1 DVD-rom and I'm going to get a new CD/RW tomorrow
My current configuration is my primary HD on IDE 1, secondary HD on IDE 2 as a master and my DVD-rom on IDE 2 as a slave.

Can anyone suggest me a good setting for 2 HDs, 1 DVD-rom and 1 cd/rw ?
I copy a large number of files from primary HD to secondary HD, burn a lot of CDs and I access my dvd-rom frequently. So I can't think of any good setting except getting a PCI IDE card so I will have 4 IDE ports.

I've heard of the VIA chipset PCI latency issue before which can be solved by installing a patch file. Is this issue only happens to PCI RAID card or any other PCI IDE cards ?

Which devices should I install on my PCI IDE card if I have one ?
both HDs or both optical devices ?

thanks

 

[AkumaBao]

Don't know about the VIA thing, but I would put both HDD's on one channel. Your DVD & CD-RW will slow them down when sharing a channel. If you want to get a IDE card, why not spend another $30-50 to get a RAID mobo? Then you will have two channels for just HDD's and your IDE0 & IDE1 free for whatever else.

 

[bacillus]

if you do decide to get a pci card, put both hdds on it as masters on seperate channels & leave the optical drives in the m/board ide controllers each being on a different channel as masters!

 

[CyNics]

are there any performance hits if I set up 2 devices on 1 IDE port ? that means IDE 1 = HD and cd-rw, IDE 2 = HD, cd-rw ?

which way is the best ? I copy a lot of files from my primary HD to secondary HD, burn a large number of files and access my dvd-rom frequently.
IDE 1 = HD, HD
IDE 2 = dvd-rom, CD=RW

or

IDE 1 = HD, cd-RW
IDE 2 = HD, dvd-rom

or

IDE 1 = HD, dvd-rom
IDE 2 = HD, cd-rw

thanks

 

[dboy]

My setup is 40gig HD (7200 rpm) as primary master, 40gig HD (5400 rpm) as primary slave, 24x CDRW as second master, DVD as secondary slave.

Works great, I haven't had any problems. I don't do copying from the DVD to CDRW though... crappy DVD drive is too slow. I haven't done any benchmarks or anything, but it didn't seem to slow anything down when I went to this configuration.

 

[dunkster]

I think the PCI IDE card is an excellent solution for system configuration flexibility, and will allow you to configure your devices as master on their own IDE connector, eliminating any master/slave device configuration

Part of the reasons I bought KR7A/RAID was for non-RAID use of the 4 IDE connectors and elimination of master/slave configs.

I also tried the latest Via patch, since I boot HD at IDE3 under RAID controller. According to HDTach 2.61, there is no HD performance gain for non-RAID HD performance. I uninstalled it.

Hope this helps!