IDE channels & Devices (A DIFFERENT APPROACH)

[johnpapgr]

The most common question is about the configuration if you have 1 HD, 1 CD and 1 CD-R (and maybe a 2nd HD).
Well, maybe it depends of how you may use your devices, but as I'm thinking of buying a 2nd (ATA100) HD for capturing video, here is what I think is best:

Primary Master: 1st HD
Primary Slave: CD-ROM

Secondary Master: 2nd HD
Secondary Slave: CD-RW

Think of the overloading of the IDE channels for a while... The problem is not when having a slow device connected with a fast device in the same channel. After all, Intel Ultra ATA100 drivers configure EACH device in its maximum speed, regardless of the connection.
However what those drivers (and any driver) can't do, is avoiding the overloading of each channel, when both its devices work...
See what happens with the above setup:

1. Capturing
The only devices which are in use are the 2 HDs (the 1st one for internal/system/program purposes). Which means only 1 device per channel. Which means much much less overload than having the 2 HDs in the same channel.

2. Burning on-the-fly
Again the 2 devices (CD & CD-RW) which are in use are in different channels. Of course in this case the 1st HD will also be in a little use (for internal/system/program purposes). That's exactly why I prefer it connected with the CD (and not CD-RW). Because CD is less demanding.

3. Burning from HD
You can smartly use your 1st HD for this purpose and again have only 2 devices (1st HD & CD-RW) which work in different channels.

So:
Having 2 HDs in the same channel is not good. In fact it is even worse than having a CD & CD-RW in the same channel. Simply because HDs are very fast devices and transfer a lot more MB/sec through the channel. And when they are working at the same time, in the same channel, they double the MB/sec amount, which overloads the channel a lot!
Having CD & CD-RW in the same channel is also not good for on-the-fly burning.

Tip:
You can disable 'Auto-insert notification' in CD, which will help it be invisible, when not in use.

Drawbacks:
The only drawback seems to be when installing software from CD to 1st HD. But I think we could live with a little less performance during installation.
Or maybe we could use the CD-RW for installation purposes.
Or even better we could temporarily copy the installation CD to HD and install from HD, which is the best & fastest (and I always do! You see I once had a CD which could not be read correctly and started installation. It stopped at 90%, I couldn't uninstall the partially installed program normally, my system was f@cked, and I did a manual uninstall according to the created install.log file I found. It took me hours. If I had tried to temporary copy the installation CD in HD in the first place, É would avoid all these, as there would be an error in copying from the broken CD!)

...OR (and I need comments on this) we could change the CD with the CD-RW, putting the first as secondary master, and the second as primary slave...

Conclusion:
If you only have 1 HD and have your CD & CD-RW in the same (secondary) channel, and it works OK (no burn errors) when you burn on-the-fly, then you can leave it like this, although you will have less chances to get burn errors if you have them in separate channels.
But if you have 2 HDs you sure have less performance when they are in the same channel (although you won't notice it, as HDs don't give burn errors... ). You should separate them and they will work better in different channels, even if they are together with slower devices, as long as those slower devices are not working at the same time. And most of the time (copying between HDs, capturing, etc.) they won't.

IMPORTANT:
I think you realized that to proceed with the above, you have to get rid of your 40-pin cable, and get an ULTRA ATA 80-pin one (like the one in primary channel) for your secondary channel as well...

[Edited by johnpapgr on 03-25-2001 at 02:28 PM]

[midnight-hacker]

I've got to agree with you on the good side of keeping the CD-Roms on two separate channels. And the hard drives, being faster, might benefit more from that scenario.
But if you are considering the ultimate in performance, you might consider a raid setup. Getting two hard disks that are similar size and speed, in a raid, you would get better performance. Getting just a addon controller for the hard drives might give the edge that you are looking for with your 2 HDD and 2 CD-rom/rw scenario.

And if you are using Win2K, and you have enough space on both drives, you might consider a dynamic disk, setup in a stripe (its essentially RAID, but without the controller, but only usable in NT/2000)