Some of you may remember my computer woes from this thread. I was poking around NewEgg and it surprised the bejesus out of me to find that I could get a DVD burner combo by Samsung for $32.99.
That blows my mind. I said in that earlier thread that I didn’t want to invest in anything more than a converter chip, but knowing that I can get such a versatile drive so inexpensively is an opportunity I can’t pass up. On my current setup I have a DVD ROM and a separate 48x CD burner that are taking up my only IDE port. Switching to the combo drive will then leave the second position open on my cable.
I have an ATA-IV 80gig Seagate Barracuda from 2002-2003 that I want to hook up. Could I put a hard drive and a combo drive on the same cable? How might I set that up? Cable select on both or a master-slave configuration?
Yes, you can put both on the same cable. And the way in which you configure them does not matter - you can make the hard drive the master and the combo the slave, or vice-versa. In modern computers it is inconsequential.
Cable select just means that the master/slave configuration will be determined by which one is connected where on the cable. The easiest thing to do is just set the jumpers on both to cable select and plug them in.
One thing to note: if you have a fast device (i.e. a hard drive) and a slow device (i.e. a CD/DVD drive) on the same IDE cable, then when the slow one is being accessed, throughput to the fast one will be greatly reduced.
Meaning: if you’re accessing the hard drive while the combo drive is idle, you’ll have no problem - if you try to access both at the same time, you will notice a performance degradation. This is because only one device can use the IDE channel at a time - and the hard drive will have to wait for the slow combo drive to execute its commands before doing anything itself.
Good to know, thank you. I forgot to mention that the drive I’m currently using is a 40 gig SATA drive. I’m planning to use it as the program drive and the “new” one for storage (I’ve actually been sitting on that since before I got this computer). I’ve been conferring on this project with a friend who put his own rig together last month. I’ve learned from experience that he knows his way around a motherboard and such, but he’s concerned about how running both an IDE drive and a SATA drive will affect performance. Will that be an issue?
Cd roms used to say use as primary when a hard drive is shared, but it really doesn’t matter anymore. Two devices on the same IDE channel restrict the access to lowest common speed. I don’t know of a reason for the IDE channel to slow down a SATA, but that means I just don’t know of a reason, maybe he’s thinking of drive to drive transfer which would go no faster than the slowest access speed.
Cable select is from a long time ago and you have to have a cable that is hard wired to do this. You’ll need to use the jumpers unless the cable is marked master and slave, because that is a cable sellect cable.
No. If you only use one device at a time, they operate at their full speed, regardless of the speed of the other device. If you try to access both at once, as I said, there can be a slowdown - but it is not as simple as the “lowest common speed”.
I think you have it backwards - cable select is pretty much standard now.
I said it was from a long time ago, I didn’t say it wasn’t in use. They were in use with IDE 16 bit access controllers. Manufactures of computer systems don’t have to worry about setting the jumpers with these cables, so they like to use them. You’re unlikely to find them in home assembled systems, since the ones I see for sale are always the ones where you need to set jumpers. I only added the bit on cable select to clarify for Khan how to know which way he has to set his jumpers on the drives.
Put a mode 2 cd rom on the same cable as a mode 4 hard drive and the system set them both for mode 2 access. The IDE interfaces have improved greatly so the slower devices may not drag down the other device any longer. He likely won’t have a slower device on the interface, because they should both be Ultra ATA133 at this point.
Thanks for the info. Considering that the hard drive I have is from around late 2002, will I have to worry about the cable issues or had they been resolved by then? I ordered the combo drive last night. It’s by samsung and is actually 18x instead of 16, and is A WHOLE DOLLAR CHEAPER! I now will have a free 5.25" bay, and finding cover panels seems nigh-impossible short of making my own. There was a cool drawer I could use in the space on Newegg, but it’s out of stock. Any suggestions?
I now will have a free 5.25" bay, and finding cover panels seems nigh-impossible short of making my own. There was a cool drawer I could use in the space on Newegg, but it’s out of stock. Any suggestions?