drive configuration question

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brushes

is there any difference in performance/reliability;

IDE0: HDD master - HDD slave
IDE1: cdrom master - cdrw slave

or;

IDE0: HDD master - cdrw slave
IDE1: cdrom master - HDD slave

opinions welcome

polly
 
It depends on if your IDE ports support dual fifo and will run different DMA mode for each device, also depends if DMA is enabled.
If your IDE ports will run only a single DMA mode you should put hard drives on one port and CD devices on the other. DMA should be enabled for all devices. If DMA is not enabled you will have poor performance, especially when two device on the same port are accessed.
is there any difference in performance/reliability;

IDE0: HDD master - HDD slave
IDE1: cdrom master - cdrw slave

or;

IDE0: HDD master - cdrw slave
IDE1: cdrom master - HDD slave

opinions welcome

polly
Click to expand...

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Mike Walsh
West Palm Beach, Florida, U.S.A.
 
You want to use the FIRST option you listed. Harddrives have faster data
transfer rates than optical drives. And when you pair two devices on the
same IDE channel, BOTH devices will run at the speed of the SLOWER of the
two. So you want your harddrives together, and your optical drives
together.
 
You want to use the FIRST option you listed. Harddrives have faster data
transfer rates than optical drives. And when you pair two devices on the
same IDE channel, BOTH devices will run at the speed of the SLOWER of the
two. So you want your harddrives together, and your optical drives
together.
Click to expand...

Nope, it's been almost a decade since that was true. AFAIK,
every motherboard that supports ATA33 or higher isn't effected.

You don't ever bother to test any of what you've written do you?
One would think that an imperative since there is clearly plenty
of contradictory evidence.
 
brushes said:
is there any difference in performance/reliability;

IDE0: HDD master - HDD slave
IDE1: cdrom master - cdrw slave

or;

IDE0: HDD master - cdrw slave
IDE1: cdrom master - HDD slave

opinions welcome

polly
Click to expand...

I have mine configured as the first option, apart from anything
else the phyisical locations of my drives make this the easiest
thing to do.


I was a bit concerned about a 'faulty' rom drive causing problems
with the more 'important' harddrives when they are on the same IDE,
however I find my crom drive(s) can lock up the whole computer anyway,
usually when it cannot read a CD and it gets locked into an infinite (and
noisy)
cycle of trying to read the drive (I can't eject it either without
rebooting).

One thing I did was move the frequently accessed data onto one drive
(swop file and newsgroups in my case), i would have but them onto
the fastest drive, however that is too noisy so I prefer to keep them
on the slower drive. Basically I am trying to minimise radial movement
of the read heads, which should speed up preformance.
 
DaveW said:
You want to use the FIRST option you listed. Harddrives have faster data
transfer rates than optical drives.
Click to expand...

That seems a little because when I am burning a CD I lose loads of CD's
becuase of buffer underuns. I believe this means the hard drive could not
supply the Cdwriter with enough data fast enough. Its also doubley odd
because
all the harddrive has to do is read the data as opposed to 'burning' the
data
onto a cd, which I would imagine is a much slower process.

The probably is more too it than that though.
 
DaveW said:
You want to use the FIRST option you listed. Harddrives have faster data
transfer rates than optical drives. And when you pair two devices on the
same IDE channel, BOTH devices will run at the speed of the SLOWER of the
two. So you want your harddrives together, and your optical drives
together.
Click to expand...
Another point:
If you want to boot and run from a CDrom, it needs to be Master on an
IDE channel, when the ONLY hard drive is larger than 137Gb and
therefore, on a PCI expansion ATA card (and a third party driver MUST be
used!).

Been testing the concept with loading/reloading/ partitioning/re-
partitioning of the drive, on a Compaq Presario 5000 (1.1 Ghz Celeron,
256Mb SDRAM, Maxtor 160Gb drive, SATA 150 PCI card).

I'm ready to just stick to my SCSI drives! And, now, I get to figure
out how to add other OSes to the partitions on the huge drive. Knoppix
does NOT seem to be ready to load on it, yet, and I have to find the
Cheat codes for LBA48 in Knoppix...
 
Another point:
If you want to boot and run from a CDrom, it needs to be Master on an
IDE channel, when the ONLY hard drive is larger than 137Gb and
therefore, on a PCI expansion ATA card (and a third party driver MUST be
used!).
Click to expand...

Huh?

CDROM doesn't need to be Master, drive size has nothing to do
with it, and there was no mention of a PCI expansion card being
used.

Been testing the concept with loading/reloading/ partitioning/re-
partitioning of the drive, on a Compaq Presario 5000 (1.1 Ghz Celeron,
256Mb SDRAM, Maxtor 160Gb drive, SATA 150 PCI card).
Click to expand...

Well FWIW, Compaq's bioses arequite quirky and ill-conceived,
it's not surprising that unusual problems occur.

I'm ready to just stick to my SCSI drives! And, now, I get to figure
out how to add other OSes to the partitions on the huge drive. Knoppix
does NOT seem to be ready to load on it, yet, and I have to find the
Cheat codes for LBA48 in Knoppix...
Click to expand...

Just put it on a partition before the 128GB barrier.
 
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