Best way to hook up multiple IDE drives

Factual Questions
1

I am putting together a new computer for my parents, and would like to know the best way to connect the 3 IDE drives it will have.

They are; 80GB HDD, DVD ROM Drive, and CD/RW Drive. The DVD ROM drive will be the primary “CD” drive for installing or running applications. The CD/RW drive will mainly be used for burning VCD home movies of my first child (due in a few weeks) to send out to family members.

So what would be the best way to connect the 3 drives to IDE 1 and 2 so as to have the best possible performace from all 3?

P.S. The motherboard does have IDE 3 and IDE 4 for RAID, but I would prefer not to have to use them since RAID will not be used, so why bother loading drivers to get the drives to work if you don’t have to?

I appreciate the advice!

2

Put the HDD on a channel, the other two on another channel.

3

Agreed. Make your HDD Primary Master, your DVD-ROM the Secondary Master, and your CD-RW the Secondary Slave.

[hijack]What is it with computers that everything sounds either kinky or apocalyptic?[/hijack]

4

Concur.

5

Disagree
HDD Primary Master,CD-RW Secondary Master,DVD-ROM Secondary Slave.
Some CD-RW drives won’t work correctly when set as slave, for example my computer has 2 CD-RW drives,1 Sony 8x8x24x and 1 LG 8x8x24x and only the master drive will work at full speed, slave drive only runs at half speed 4x4x24x.
Have tried switching master and slave and still get same results, master runs full speed, slave runs half speed.
Hope This Helps.
Peace.
LIONsob

6

I agree with LIONsob – you want the CD-RW to be a master. The DVD-ROM will work just fine as a slave, as long as you aren’t trying to burn CDs while watching the Matrix at the same time.

7

I agree with the last 2 posts. I got a computer outta-the-box from HP with those same set of drives and that is how they had it set up. If you try to copy a CD using a CD copying util, there will be hell to pay if the drive doing the writing isn’t the master.

8

setting cdrw on master doesn’t affect speed really.
i have my 40x cdrw as slave and it burns at 40x speed no problem.

so it doesn’t matter where dvd or cdrw goes.
i do notice that if the dvd and cdrw are on the same ide channel, that you can’t copy cd to cd as well.

9

I would configure hard drive as primary master, dvd as primary slave and the writer as secondary master. I rember reading some place that having the CD burner and CD reader on different channels is more efficient when copying CDs from the reader. This may no longer be an issue though.

10

FWIW, when copying CDs, it’s generally a better idea to have the program temporarily copy the source to the HDD and then burn that instead of copying directly.

My old Philips 8x4x24 CD-RW works just fine as secondary slave. Judging from the other replies in this thread, I’d guess that changes on a drive-by-drive basis. I have it on slave since I put my CD-RW drives physically below my main CD/DVD-ROMs in the case, and it just feels more logical to set it up that way. :wink:

11

I think the HD needs to be on channel one and the cd drives on channel 2. I don’t think it matters much which one is slave or master though. However, with your hard drive being either ata 100 or 133 you will want it on it’s own channel. CD-ROM drives as far as I know run only at ATA-33 and no matter what speed the devices are on that same channel it will run at ata-33. It does make copying from cd to cd slower just because all the information is being sent over the same channel which can only handle so much at one time. If you hook the cd-rom on the same channel as the hard drive though, your system performace will drop significantly.

12

brainchild is correct, don’t mix an ata100/133 HDD with a ata33 CD-rom, you end up dumbing down the buss.