Newbie question about drive positions

Sorry, I know these are really basic questions, but...

I'm setting up two new CD drives on my Asus A7v333 board with two hard
drives. Am I correct that the drives should be set up with the boot
drive as Primary master, and the CD-ROM as Primary slave then the
second hard drive as Secondary master and the CD-RW as Secondary
slave?

As I understand it, data is transferred faster when the drives are on
separate cables. Is there really enough of a difference to matter?
Are there other reasons for the drives to be set up a certain way?

Thanks very much for any advice.

On Mon, 04 Aug 2003 21:38:10 -0700, Dave Smith
wrote::

Sorry, I know these are really basic questions, but...

I'm setting up two new CD drives on my Asus A7v333 board with two hard
drives. Am I correct that the drives should be set up with the boot
drive as Primary master, and the CD-ROM as Primary slave then the
second hard drive as Secondary master and the CD-RW as Secondary
slave?

As I understand it, data is transferred faster when the drives are on
separate cables. Is there really enough of a difference to matter?
Are there other reasons for the drives to be set up a certain way?

Thanks very much for any advice.

Really, the only requirement is that the boot drive be primary master.

Traditional configuration was

Primary Master: Boot hard drive
Primary Slave: Second hard drive

Secondary master: Optical disc reader (ie. CDROM or DVDROM)
Secondary Slave: Optical disc writer (ie. CDRW or DVD...)

The reasons for these drives to be set up this way have long since
been resolved. With a modern controller, with the exception of the
boot drive, you can put your other drives at any position you wish.
Assuming there isn't some other occupant already there, of course.

----------------------------------------
Thanks,

MCheu

"Stacey" wrote in message
...
Dave Smith wrote:

Sorry, I know these are really basic questions, but...

I'm setting up two new CD drives on my Asus A7v333 board with two hard
drives. Am I correct that the drives should be set up with the boot
drive as Primary master, and the CD-ROM as Primary slave then the
second hard drive as Secondary master and the CD-RW as Secondary
slave?

Nope, the IDE channel defaults to the speed of the slowest drive on that
channel.


Ummm, coughbull****cough.

My ATA133 drive shares an 80 wire cable with a CD-ROM on an ATA100
controller and gets good speeds in HDD tests. A lot better than the ATA66
drive that is sharing a controller with my CD-RW. And it's nothing to do
with the buffer size either, (although they differ) I've used sustained
write/read tests.

Your statement may have been true once but it isn't any longer. It doesn't
really matter where you put drives anymore, as MCheu correctly pointed out.
--
~misfit~



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Wrong. Wow, what misinformation you spew. Unless of course you are still on
a 486, Stacey. Time to upgrade to at least a Pent 1.

"Stacey" wrote in message
...
Nope, the IDE channel defaults to the speed of the slowest drive on that
channel. All CDroms that I know of are ATA33 and all new drives are at
least ATA100. The way you sugested would slow both hard drives down to
performance levels of 5 years ago! If both drives are ATA66 or above,
conect them are primary master and slave and put the 2 CD's on the
secondary.

"Dave Smith" wrote in message
...
Sorry, I know these are really basic questions, but...

I'm setting up two new CD drives on my Asus A7v333 board with two hard
drives. Am I correct that the drives should be set up with the boot
drive as Primary master, and the CD-ROM as Primary slave then the
second hard drive as Secondary master and the CD-RW as Secondary
slave?

As I understand it, data is transferred faster when the drives are on
separate cables. Is there really enough of a difference to matter?
Are there other reasons for the drives to be set up a certain way?

Thanks very much for any advice.


if you are going to copy a cd "on the fly"
Nero suggests having your two cd's on seperate channels

If DMA is working on both drives you will not have any problems with both drives on the same cable.

philo wrote:

"Dave Smith" wrote in message
...
Sorry, I know these are really basic questions, but...

I'm setting up two new CD drives on my Asus A7v333 board with two hard
drives. Am I correct that the drives should be set up with the boot
drive as Primary master, and the CD-ROM as Primary slave then the
second hard drive as Secondary master and the CD-RW as Secondary
slave?

As I understand it, data is transferred faster when the drives are on
separate cables. Is there really enough of a difference to matter?
Are there other reasons for the drives to be set up a certain way?

Thanks very much for any advice.

if you are going to copy a cd "on the fly"
Nero suggests having your two cd's on seperate channels

--
Mike Walsh
West Palm Beach, Florida, U.S.A.

philo wrote:



if you are going to copy a cd "on the fly"
Nero suggests having your two cd's on seperate channels


That is true, but it is not so important with burn proof Drives.
I did build one computer, where the CD writer did not being on the same
cable as the DVD drive, but all it took was a change to the slave and
master jumpers, the CD writer did not work when it was master, but
worked fine as slave.

Very strange.

kony wrote:


I would not be so sure of that, I found a difference when i took my
CDwriter from the same ccable as my hard drive. That was on the Epox
board,

Through misconfiguration it's possible, but the motherboard controller


I more or less know what I am doing, but, yes, I could have done
something wrong, not sure how?

and OS both support full speed operation by both devices, up to
whichever limiter applies, be it a 40-pin cable, the max ATA mode
supported, or the drive itself, as it's been since about 1995. Having

I see, I never realised they solved the problem that early.
I got my first P.C around 1996 and i was told then that you should not
put a lower speed CDrom drive on the same cable as a faster hard drive.



it (one slowing down the other) occur is the exception rather than the
rule.


I see.

On Tue, 5 Aug 2003 22:29:07 +0000 (UTC), AD C
wrote:

it's been since about 1995.

I see, I never realised they solved the problem that early.
I got my first P.C around 1996 and i was told then that you should not
put a lower speed CDrom drive on the same cable as a faster hard drive.

I did fail to mention one very important little detail...

They have to both be running in UATA mode. PIO can't be used on the
CDROM and UATA on the HDD, for example.


Dave

If you run both CD drives in PIO mode with burn proof on the same cable you will not make coasters, but burning will be very slow and a lot of space will be wasted because of the write operation constantly stopping and starting.]


AD C wrote:

philo wrote:


if you are going to copy a cd "on the fly"
Nero suggests having your two cd's on seperate channels


That is true, but it is not so important with burn proof Drives.
I did build one computer, where the CD writer did not being on the same
cable as the DVD drive, but all it took was a change to the slave and
master jumpers, the CD writer did not work when it was master, but
worked fine as slave.

Very strange.

--
Mike Walsh
West Palm Beach, Florida, U.S.A.