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Message started by Mechatronic on Aug 8th, 2006 at 12:49am

Title: Hard drive and cd rom on same IDE channel
Post by Mechatronic on Aug 8th, 2006 at 12:49am
Hello, I recently found Radified since I'm getting a new hard drive and want to partition it for maximum efficiency.  

I have 2 hard drives, a dvd-rom and a cd burner.  Is it possible to have the Master hard drive connected to the dvd-rom on IDE channel 1 and the other Slave hard drive connected to the cd-burner on IDE channel 2?

Any replies would be greatly appreciated.  Thanks

*I'm still in the process of charting out my two hard drives and looking for the best way to do so.  I recently discovered that I could potentially have a dual boot system so that I could play old games such as Mechwarrior 2.  I still need to look into that.

Title: Re: Hard drive and cd rom on same IDE channel
Post by NightOwl on Aug 8th, 2006 at 1:05am
Mechatronic

What you may have to look into--older IDE controllers--the faster device on a given channel had to slow down to the slower speed of the two devices--so it wasn't a good idea to have slower optical devices on same channel as the HDD's--which were usually faster.

Newer controllers, I think that is no longer an issue--each device runs at it's rated speed independently--but that's what you need to confirm for your system.

Recent partitioning threads--you may have seen these:

Partitioning Help, Dual Booting

Drive Partitioning for CAD use.



Title: Re: Hard drive and cd rom on same IDE channel
Post by Mechatronic on Aug 8th, 2006 at 1:12am
Thanks for the quick reply.

I was wondering where I can find that information about my system.  Does it depend on what year it was made?  I have a Dell 4550 made in Dec 2002.

Thanks again

Title: Re: Hard drive and cd rom on same IDE channel
Post by ckcc on Aug 8th, 2006 at 1:44am
This is what I ran across recently adding a 3rd HD to my system:

Original setup:
IDE channel 1
   60 GB HD- master
   60 GB HD- slave
IDE channel 2
   DVD Burner- Master or single

I added a 160 GB HD to channel 2 with my burner but thinking the HD would be better as master, I switched the burner to slave. Well a few days later when I attempted to backup a DVD movie I found my ripping time (time taken to save to HD)  had pretty much doubled. Well I thought that maybe it was because I was saving to the new HD on the same channel as the DVD drive... so I tried saving to the other drive on channel 1.... same results. Hmmm...so I simply swapped the jumpers to make the DVD drive master and the HD slave and all was back to normal. I don't know the reason for this happening.

I have always kept optical drives and hard drives on seperate channels till now. You just may have to try different configurations to see if any give problems. Personally I would put the HD's together on channel 1 but don't really know if it would make any difference.

Title: Re: Hard drive and cd rom on same IDE channel
Post by NightOwl on Aug 8th, 2006 at 1:51am
Mechatronic

Based on these two references, your system should be okay:

How should I install my DVD-RW hardware?

Is it possible to have 3 optical drives?

But ckcc has a valid point--it seems to all depend on one's particular system--even different HDD's on different controller chips on the same system can perform differently depending on their position and controller--not to mention what file system is in use!


Title: Re: Hard drive and cd rom on same IDE channel
Post by Brian on Aug 8th, 2006 at 1:57am
ckcc,

Did you happen to notice if the DVD drive was DMA or PIO when it was a slave?

It happened to me. My DVD drive was very slow and I found it was set to PIO. I simply had to turn it ON in the BIOS and then it was DMA. It still worked when it was OFF in the BIOS but at PIO speed.

Title: Re: Hard drive and cd rom on same IDE channel
Post by ckcc on Aug 8th, 2006 at 10:07am
Brian,

No, I didn't notice the DMA setting at the time. Would it change the setting on its on by just changing from master to slave? It always  worked fine until I added the HD.

Title: Re: Hard drive and cd rom on same IDE channel
Post by Brian on Aug 8th, 2006 at 3:16pm
ckcc,

Are you an experimenting type like me? I'd change it back (HD to Master, DVD to Slave) and check the DMA/PIO mode settings and ripping speed.

Title: Re: Hard drive and cd rom on same IDE channel
Post by ckcc on Aug 9th, 2006 at 10:04am
Brian,

Yes I am the experimenting type and I may try it... but I have several other "experiments" that I'm working on at the moment.

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