IDE chain

[mpancha]

okay... I have 2 Maxtor 20 GB ATA 100 Hard drives, a CDRW, and CDrom. all IDE because I'm poor and can't afford SCSI. The way I have it set up now is both Hard drives are on the same IDE channel, and both CD drives are on the same channel. I know that to do cd copying, the ideal setup is to have the cdrom and cdrw on different channels. But if I do that will my hard drives go from ATA 100 back down to 33? what's the ideal setup for what I have?

 

[Green Man]

Check an article about the subject here

The conclusion is, I think, that you can put a hard drive as master on each channel with the CDRom and CDRW as slaves without much performance hit.

 

[Erasmus-X]

It looks like you're already configured optimally, if you want to maintain ATA/100 connections for your hard drives. But, it also depends on your motherboard. For example, the Asus A7V has two separate IDE controllers (one for that is ATA/100 and another that is ATA/66). If your motherboard sports a configuration like this, you can just run hard drives on the ATA/100 controller and set the CD drives up to be master devices on the ATA/66 channels.

 

[Jiggz]

If you're not having problems burning Cd I say you're configured right. If your having problems but still want to maintain the ATA-100 and you're Mobo doesn't have the extra IDE channel, get a Promise controller and probably cost you as little as $30.00 and get 2 exta IDE channels.

 

[Pakman]

You might get coasters (bad copies) if you try to burn from CD to CDRW on the fly with that setup especially if u have a fast CDRW. I recommend making each HD a master on it's own IDE and make your CDRom a slave on your Primary IDE and your CDRW a slave on your Secondary IDE. Run some benchmarks with Sandra or HDTach and write down the results. Then reconfigure the way I have recommended above and benchmark it again. If your not happy with the results just switch it back. From what I understand, performance hit will be minimal by having todays ATA100 drives on the same IDE channel with an ATA33. Of course, this may all change in the future.

 

[Noriaki]

Why does every one still belive that have an ATA100 Master and ATA33 Slave limits both to ATA33? It does not. This is an old problem, that has long since been resolved and is not true in any relatively new IDE controller. At one point yes this was the case, but no more.

You can put your ATA100 hard drive with an ATA33 slave and your hard drive will stay at ATA100. That IDE can do, what IDE can not do very well is comminucate with both devices on the same IDE chain at the same time.

So for optimal burning you want the source drive (be it CDROM or Hard drive) on a separate IDE chain.

You could buy a Promise Ultra100 and give all 4 Devices their own chains, that works even better. But you can mate two devices of different speeds.

 

[mpancha]

<< Why does every one still belive that have an ATA100 Master and ATA33 Slave limits both to ATA33? It does not. This is an old problem, that has long since been resolved and is not true in any relatively new IDE controller. At one point yes this was the case, but no more. >>



That's why I asked... I didn't know what to beleive. Either way, I'm going to go with the promise controller route. I used to have one with my old ata33 mobo, but sold it when I got my ata 100 mobo. Thanks for the help all.

 

[Jiggz]

Noriake, I'm not quite sure I agree with you on this one but I don't have a link to disprove you either with regards to IDE, but I do have a link about CD-Rom ATAPI that will dis-prove you, check this out and go to the troubleshooting section for ATAPI drives. CD-Rom: