4 IDE drives... how should I do it?
- Thread starter MrLip
- Start date
sonusman
Banned
Ahhhhhhhh...
First, if that 7200rpm drive is ATA66, and the 5400rpm drive is UDMA33, if you don't have a ATA66 controller on your motherboard, you should just skip all the crap and get a Promise Ultra ATA controller card. I will not go deep into this issue, but I ran into a very big problem with trying to mix the two ATA standards on a 33 controller. Especially with Maxtors drives, and mainly, if you need to enable DMA for better performance.
If all is well, then make the two hard drives the Masters on the Primary and Secondary IDE channels, and slave the CD drives to them. Make sure you set the jumpers on the back of all the drives correctly or the stuff just won't work at all!
Good luck.
Ed
First, if that 7200rpm drive is ATA66, and the 5400rpm drive is UDMA33, if you don't have a ATA66 controller on your motherboard, you should just skip all the crap and get a Promise Ultra ATA controller card. I will not go deep into this issue, but I ran into a very big problem with trying to mix the two ATA standards on a 33 controller. Especially with Maxtors drives, and mainly, if you need to enable DMA for better performance.
If all is well, then make the two hard drives the Masters on the Primary and Secondary IDE channels, and slave the CD drives to them. Make sure you set the jumpers on the back of all the drives correctly or the stuff just won't work at all!
Good luck.
Ed
Slackmaster2K
Gone
Here's how you need to think: "which devices do I often use together?"
As you may know, an IDE channel can support two devices, but only one device can use the pipe at a time, while the other must wait.
In your case I would do this:
IDE1 Primary: 5400RPM Drive
IDE1 Secondary: CD Recorder
IDE2 Primary: 7200RPM Drive
IDE2 Secondary: CD Reader
The logic:
- You want your OS drive and your audio drive on seperate channels. First you can isolate the swap file to the OS drive so swapping can occur without mucking up your audio stream. Second, you never really know why or when the OS will need to load something.
- I'm guessing that you use the CD burner to burn audio. So you'll want to have the burner and the audio drive on seperate channels. The downside: you better not try to do ANYTHING else while burning CD's this way. Any sort of activity will have windows using the 5400RPM drive on the same channel! Also, burning data from the 5400RPM drive might be touchy as well.
- For copying CD's (CD to CD) it is best to have the reader and writer on seperate channels.
- I'm guessing you use the reader more often when you're only using the 5400RPM drive.
An alternate setup would be to stick the burner on the secondary channel and the reader on the first (just swap them). Try this if you're having trouble burning clean CD's. For best results, you would copy the audio you're burning to the 5400RPM drive (in this case) and burn from there.
However, as Ed mentioned, you've basically reached the limits of IDE. Anything more than 2 devices is getting iffy...three tops....4 is "ookie" unless there's a device you rarely use.
You can help yourself out by buying a second IDE controller, like something from Promise or Adaptec. This will technically give you 4 seperate IDE channels...one for each device. I think you can do it for about $60.
You might also consider an IDE RAID controller. Even if you can't afford a second audio drive to make the RAID work, I think you can still use the controller with one drive (you'd have to check into that though). Promise and Adaptec both make RAID controllers...and I think Abit now makes a standalone RAID controller as well. Why do I recommend the RAID controller? Down the road you'll probably want to buy more hard drive space. At that time you'll be able to buy space, and increase your drive performance by about 1.5-1.7X!!! I've seen stats of IDE RAID systems with only two drives doing 39MB/sec sustained! Just a suggestion...don't let this last tidbit confuse you any
Slackmaster 2000
As you may know, an IDE channel can support two devices, but only one device can use the pipe at a time, while the other must wait.
In your case I would do this:
IDE1 Primary: 5400RPM Drive
IDE1 Secondary: CD Recorder
IDE2 Primary: 7200RPM Drive
IDE2 Secondary: CD Reader
The logic:
- You want your OS drive and your audio drive on seperate channels. First you can isolate the swap file to the OS drive so swapping can occur without mucking up your audio stream. Second, you never really know why or when the OS will need to load something.
- I'm guessing that you use the CD burner to burn audio. So you'll want to have the burner and the audio drive on seperate channels. The downside: you better not try to do ANYTHING else while burning CD's this way. Any sort of activity will have windows using the 5400RPM drive on the same channel! Also, burning data from the 5400RPM drive might be touchy as well.
- For copying CD's (CD to CD) it is best to have the reader and writer on seperate channels.
- I'm guessing you use the reader more often when you're only using the 5400RPM drive.
An alternate setup would be to stick the burner on the secondary channel and the reader on the first (just swap them). Try this if you're having trouble burning clean CD's. For best results, you would copy the audio you're burning to the 5400RPM drive (in this case) and burn from there.
However, as Ed mentioned, you've basically reached the limits of IDE. Anything more than 2 devices is getting iffy...three tops....4 is "ookie" unless there's a device you rarely use.
You can help yourself out by buying a second IDE controller, like something from Promise or Adaptec. This will technically give you 4 seperate IDE channels...one for each device. I think you can do it for about $60.
You might also consider an IDE RAID controller. Even if you can't afford a second audio drive to make the RAID work, I think you can still use the controller with one drive (you'd have to check into that though). Promise and Adaptec both make RAID controllers...and I think Abit now makes a standalone RAID controller as well. Why do I recommend the RAID controller? Down the road you'll probably want to buy more hard drive space. At that time you'll be able to buy space, and increase your drive performance by about 1.5-1.7X!!! I've seen stats of IDE RAID systems with only two drives doing 39MB/sec sustained! Just a suggestion...don't let this last tidbit confuse you any
Slackmaster 2000
Wow, these two guys covered it very well. I will second Sonusman, I was unable to make a Maxtor Ultra-66 drive work at all in a motherboard that did not have an Ultra-66 controller (even though they are supposed to be backwards-compatable). I also have to agree with Slackmaster that CD copying from an IDE CD-ROM to IDE CDR drive works much better if they are on different channels. However if most of your CD burning will be from audio data off of your hard drive, I would suggest putting the two hard drives together on the primary channel and the two CD drives together on the secondary channel.
One more thing - I have heard there are a few cheap IDE CDR drives that only work correctly when set as a IDE Master. Have not had any experiance to confirm this yet, but just something to keep in mind.
One more thing - I have heard there are a few cheap IDE CDR drives that only work correctly when set as a IDE Master. Have not had any experiance to confirm this yet, but just something to keep in mind.