two hard drives on same ide bus

[seven7]

Is it better to have two hard drives on the same ide cable or seperate ide cables with cdrom drives?

 

[dcdomain]

Heh? It sounds as though you are asking two different questions.
Anyway, it depends on which drives you move information between the most. If you copy information from harddrive to harddrive, have them on different cables because I hear only one device on a cable can be accessed at a time. If you move files from hardrive to cd and vice versa, make sure that harddrive and cd-rom is on separate cables.

 

[GregMal]

Well the theory is that the slowest drive on the chain will slow down the faster drive on the
chain. So if you have your fastest HD on IDE1 with your CD Rom, the CD Rom will slow
down the HD. Also if you have a 7200 HD on IDE1 with a 5400 HD the slower 5400 HD
will slow down the 7200 HD.....
If you're working with 2 HDs and a CD Rom........I'd put the fastest HD (7200) on IDE1 alone.
And the slower HD (5400) as Master on IDE2, the CD Rom as slave on IDE2......
Greg

 

[NelsonMuntz]

It depends on how you transfer most things. If you do a lot of hard drive to hard drive saves, then it is best to have them on separate IDEs. If you do a lot of "on the fly" burning of CDs, then it is best to have CD devices on separate IDEs. I personally keep my booting hard drive as primary master and have my DVD as primary slave. Then I put my CD-RW as secondary master and have my data hard drive as secondary slave.

 

[seven7]

well i have 2 cdrom drives and 2 hard drives. However, I hardly use the CDROm drives. In that case wouldn't it be best to put 1 cdrom drive and 1 hd and 1 cdrom drive and 1 hd.

 

[Sugadaddy]

<< Well the theory is that the slowest drive on the chain will slow down the faster drive on the
chain. So if you have your fastest HD on IDE1 with your CD Rom, the CD Rom will slow
down the HD. Also if you have a 7200 HD on IDE1 with a 5400 HD the slower 5400 HD
will slow down the 7200 HD.....
If you're working with 2 HDs and a CD Rom........I'd put the fastest HD (7200) on IDE1 alone.
And the slower HD (5400) as Master on IDE2, the CD Rom as slave on IDE2......
Greg >>




Unfortunately, that theory is false. But I agree with your placement.

I have 2 HDs, a DVD and a CDRW. The 2 HDs are together and 2 CD-roms on the other channel. I don't do many HD to HD transfer, or copy CDs from the DVD so it works well.

If you don't use your CD-rom drives often, I'd put the HD with the OS as master on IDE1, the other HD on IDE2 and a CD-rom on each channel...

 

[corkyg]

In general, I buy Sugadaddy's response. There are always rules and exceptions to rule. My config works very well and it does everything without complaint.

Channel 1 IDE has two identical HDDs, both in mobile racks so they can be turned on and off. Only one runs at a time in Windows. The system boots off of either one . . . they are identical in size and content.

Channel 2 has a LS-120 drive as Master and a DVD ROM drive as slave.

Cloning of one HDD to the other is done in DOS with both on . . . using Drive Copy 4.

 

[TRUMPHENT]

Do what I do! I have two SCSI LVD drives one one interface, a CDROM and CDRW on an IDE channel and a Quantum Bigfoot 19.2GB drive as the Master on the Primary IDE channel. My computer boots from Drive F:, the 9.1GB Quantum Atlas 10K LVD SCSI drive. It makes awesome access noise while booting . It sounds like, well it sounds like "Napalm in the Morning"! Actually, it is more like a 5.56 mini gun firing at 10,000 rounds per minute, I love it.