Will a LS-120 Slow My Hard Drives Performance?

[GaffMan]

I have a ATA-100 hard drive thats running on an ATA-100 primary IDE interface, and I'd like to set up an LS-120 as a slave to my hard drive on the same IDE port. Will the LS-120 slow my hard drives performance?

 

[Boonesmi]

yes it will slow it, but by how much i cant tell you.

at least thats my understanding of how ide works

 

[Tired of the Bull]

I thought that newer controllers did not suffer from this problem. I was under the impression that they could handle the different speed drives on the same channel without slowing the performance of the faster drive. Older controllers had this problem but I don't think your MB should have a problem.

Can someone help me out here?

 

[GaffMan]

I was thinking that I had read a long time ago that the multiple drives on an IDE interface will run at the interface speed of the drive with the slowest interface type, but I'm not sure.

 

[JackMDS]

It will slow when you transfer files from the HD to the LS20 and vice versa.

The HD by it self (when the LS is not used), will not slow.

 

[GaffMan]

Tired Of The Bull, I'm running a very new motherboard, MSI KT7 Turbo, so it should have the latest and greatest IDE implementation. The BTW, I am running my Duron 700 without a problem at 933 mhz (133 mhz front side bus) with that motherboard.

 

[Noriaki]

<< I was thinking that I had read a long time ago that the multiple drives on an IDE interface will run at the interface speed of the drive with the slowest interface type, but I'm not sure. >>

Yes you probably did because it used to be true.
But new controllers (anything with ATA100 or ATA66 will qualify as new) don't have this problem.

Slave can be ATA33 to an ATA100 Master, and the Master will get the full 100MB/s. New IDE controllers can effeciently switch modes.

What IDE can not do effeciently is communicate with both devices on the chain at once.

So if you are using the LS120 and the hard drive at the same time it will slow down the hard drive some (it will in theory slow down the LS120 as well, but that's already so comparatively slow it shouldn't matter).

 

[GaffMan]

Thanks for the help guys! I've got the LS120 all set to go.

 

[Motero]

I've got the same setup...My IBM Ata 100 hd as master and ls120 as slave. It doesn't appear to slow down booting up or anything, but the transfer of files lags a little.

 

[Homer]

At the best of times transferring files to/from an LS-120 &quot;lags a little&quot;, regardless of how you set it up. It's still a useful device. I make a lot of use of them. I generally try to keep them off the channel with the boot drive, but it doesn't seem to hurt any in real world terms if you have to do it.