Multiple drives - probably a very stupid question!

  • Thread starter Thread starter John Peel
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J

John Peel

Hi all,

All the parts have now arrived and i am going to start putting together
my first PC. I have a probably very silly question relating to my hard
drive / cdrom etc but its playing on my mind.

I have a maxtor diamond plus hard drive, a DVD rom, a CD-RW and a floppy
disk drive. I also have 1 ide cable that has the following attachment:
System board, master, slave. The hard drive will be my master, one of
the drives (probably my CD-RW) will be the slave and i believe the
floppy connects directly to the mobo. So the question is how is the
other device connected? (the DVD Rom) the ide cable goes from the mobo
to the HD then onto the Cd-RW but then there are no more connectors.

Anyone able to give a basic guide on how i should install all 4 drives.

Any help much appreciated

John
 
John Peel said:
Hi all,

All the parts have now arrived and i am going to start putting together
my first PC. I have a probably very silly question relating to my hard
drive / cdrom etc but its playing on my mind.

I have a maxtor diamond plus hard drive, a DVD rom, a CD-RW and a floppy
disk drive. I also have 1 ide cable that has the following attachment:
System board, master, slave. The hard drive will be my master, one of
the drives (probably my CD-RW) will be the slave and i believe the
floppy connects directly to the mobo. So the question is how is the
other device connected? (the DVD Rom) the ide cable goes from the mobo
to the HD then onto the Cd-RW but then there are no more connectors.

Anyone able to give a basic guide on how i should install all 4 drives.

Any help much appreciated

John
Click to expand...

You should have TWO or more IDE connectors on your motherboard, probably
labelled ide0 and ide1.

You need another IDE cable, about $5. Buy one with three connectors (two
for drives) so you will have another connector for possible future use.

http://www.mwave.com/mwave/viewspec.hmx?scriteria=BA19877

You should install the DVD-Rom on the same cable as the hard drive, set the
hard drive's jumper to master and the DVD-Rom's jumper to Slave. Connect to
first IDE connector on mainboard (ide0?)

Install the CDR/W on it's own IDE cable (purchased separately). -Dave
 
John Peel said:
Hi all,

All the parts have now arrived and i am going to start putting together
my first PC. I have a probably very silly question relating to my hard
drive / cdrom etc but its playing on my mind.

I have a maxtor diamond plus hard drive, a DVD rom, a CD-RW and a floppy
disk drive. I also have 1 ide cable that has the following attachment:
System board, master, slave. The hard drive will be my master, one of
the drives (probably my CD-RW) will be the slave and i believe the
floppy connects directly to the mobo. So the question is how is the
other device connected? (the DVD Rom) the ide cable goes from the mobo
to the HD then onto the Cd-RW but then there are no more connectors.

Anyone able to give a basic guide on how i should install all 4 drives.

Any help much appreciated

John
Click to expand...

and the basic guide answer is : use two cables :)

motherboard should have two ide conectors next to or above each other. plus
I'd make the DVD rom the slave on ide1 (attached after HD)and the CDRW the
master on the second channel. remember to change the jumper settings on the
drives.
 
frankie.boy said:
and the basic guide answer is : use two cables :)

motherboard should have two ide conectors next to or above each other. plus
I'd make the DVD rom the slave on ide1 (attached after HD)and the CDRW the
master on the second channel. remember to change the jumper settings on the
drives.
Click to expand...
so basically the DVD and hd will go onto one cable and are connected to
the mobo. The cdrw goes on another seperate cable and is connected to
the mobo. the floppy is on its own cable and connected to the mobo.

I knew there must be a simple answer. thanks for your help!!

John
 
Hmmm... Your motherboard should have TWO IDE channel slots and a Floppy
channel slot . Connect ONLY the harddrive on IDE 1. Connect the CD-RW as
Master and the DVD as Slave on IDE 2. Connect the Floppy drive to the
Floppy slot. You need to buy another IDE cable and a floppy cable it sounds
like.
 
Dave said:
You should have TWO or more IDE connectors on your motherboard, probably
labelled ide0 and ide1.

You need another IDE cable, about $5. Buy one with three connectors (two
for drives) so you will have another connector for possible future use.

http://www.mwave.com/mwave/viewspec.hmx?scriteria=BA19877

You should install the DVD-Rom on the same cable as the hard drive, set the
hard drive's jumper to master and the DVD-Rom's jumper to Slave. Connect to
first IDE connector on mainboard (ide0?)

Install the CDR/W on it's own IDE cable (purchased separately). -Dave
Click to expand...

I'd put the HD on its own IDE channel and put the DVD and CD/RW together
on the other channel. You don't want the optical drives slowing down
access to the hard disk.
 
I'd put the HD on its own IDE channel and put the DVD and CD/RW together
on the other channel. You don't want the optical drives slowing down
access to the hard disk.
Click to expand...

I'd tend to agree with you on that but for two reasons. First, the DVD-Rom
drive is not going to slow down the hard drive much, if at all. At worst,
but somewhat unlikely, the channel might be running at a different ATA rate,
and you probably won't notice the difference. Second, I've seen many people
claim that CD to CD copying is faster if the source (DVD-Rom, in this case)
and burner are on separate IDE channels. I've never been able to confirm
this myself, but many people swear it's true.

So I think the best idea is to put the CDR/W on it's own ide channel all by
itself. But there should be no problem with putting the HD on it's own ide
channel all by itself, either. So while I'm somewhat disagreeing with you,
you are not wrong. :) -Dave
 
Dave said:
I'd tend to agree with you on that but for two reasons. First, the DVD-Rom
drive is not going to slow down the hard drive much, if at all. At worst,
but somewhat unlikely, the channel might be running at a different ATA rate,
and you probably won't notice the difference. Second, I've seen many people
claim that CD to CD copying is faster if the source (DVD-Rom, in this case)
and burner are on separate IDE channels. I've never been able to confirm
this myself, but many people swear it's true.

So I think the best idea is to put the CDR/W on it's own ide channel all by
itself. But there should be no problem with putting the HD on it's own ide
channel all by itself, either. So while I'm somewhat disagreeing with you,
you are not wrong. :) -Dave
Click to expand...

Actually, I think the deciding factor should be whether you expect to do
a lot of CD to CD copying. If that's the case then putting the optical
drives on different IDEs is probably a good idea. If, OTOH, you very
rarely copy CDs then you should get better optical drive and hard disk
performance by having the optical drives on one channel and the hard
disk on another. Don't forget, only one device can use the IDE at a time
so if you're using the HD and DVD at the same time they are going to
compete for the bus - you may find for example that DVD playback is
'choppy'.
 
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