IDE drive configuration: Myths or Legends?

C

Cuzin B

New member
All,

I just took delivery of a very nice new Antec Sonata case for my DAW. Besides it's extremely silent operation, it has very nice appointments for loading hard disks and 5.25 drives.

However, in this new case - the drive cages sit just far enough away from each other to make optimum IDE connectivity a real problem.

Prior to purchasing the Sonata case, I had an ugly, heavy rackmount case that I finally gave up on due to amount of time it would take to do any quick changes to my hardware.

My drive config in that rackmount was like this:

IDE 1 Master - WD 800JB
IDE 1 Slave - Plextor 40/12/40A

IDE 2 Master - WD 800JB
IDE 2 Slave - DVD-R

I have always considered this config to be standard for optimum usage of the IDE channels during read/write operations.

Due to current cable length limitations in this new case , I have had to revert my config to look like this:

IDE 1 Master - WD 800JB
IDE 1 Slave - WD 800JB

IDE 2 Master - Plextor 40/12/40A
IDE 2 Slave - DVD-R

I have read scads of opinion that the config on IDE 1 could cause problems when recording due to the fact that a single IDE bus theoretically can only do one write operation at a time. Your thoughts? Am I even going to notice any difference in these configs? I would like to hear some solid opinion on this.

There is the option to go to a 36 inch version of IDE cables from Antec (Cobra series) and I know that 36 inches goes way beyond the IDE spec for cable length but I may have to go to this length to get an IDE cable with enough spacing between drive connectors to hook everything up right.

Anyone using extra long cables? Any problems? Any suggestions on shorter cables with at least 10-12 inches between connectors?

Cheers,

Cuzin B
 
It's generally considered better to keep your hard disks on one IDE channel, and your optical drives on another channel. I'm surprised you had it the other way around. CD and DVD devices are so slow and such bandwidth hogs that it's generally a good idea to keep them as far away from the drives as possible. Anyway, there shouldn't be any problems with this configuration, I assume this is how most people config their drives, I've been doing it for years this way. Hard drives are so fast nowadays, especially compared to the actual requirements of digital audio, that even if your system drive performed a read while your audio drive was writing or reading, there's little chance that you or your computer would even blink.
 
charger said:
It's generally considered better to keep your hard disks on one IDE channel, and your optical drives on another channel. I'm surprised you had it the other way around. CD and DVD devices are so slow and such bandwidth hogs that it's generally a good idea to keep them as far away from the drives as possible.
Click to expand...

That's what I always thought too...then I started reading about more and more pro-audio folks saying that it is truly beneficial to at least ensure your hard disks are set to master on separate IDE channels and have the optical on as slaves to each channel.

The obvious benefit (the way I see it) is that an audio drive as master on IDE 2 will always have it's own clear pipe for writing data during recording and won't collide (or have to wait) while the hard disk on master IDE 1 does it's thing.

I also am still confused about this myth or legend: If a hard disk and optical are on one IDE cable...the hard disk may throttle down to the UDMA-level of the optical drive during transfer...is this still an issue...was it ever an issue...or is it just crapola....I have never witnessed this myself on several DAWs that I have had over the years.

My logic on this is that, as slow as an optical drive is, the chances of it being in use at the same time as a hard drive is so minimal that a guy would never have to worry about optical drives hogging bandwidth as is always advertised.

True? False? Thoughts?

Cuzin B
 
I don't think having two hard drives on the same IDE bus is any sort of issue at all. Reads and writes are really damn fast on hard drives, compared to the needs of digital audio, as I said earlier. When I copy between drives on the same IDE channel, I get just about the max performance that I get on benchmark tests, and I get better performance from my IDE drives (on teh same channel) than I get from my SATA drive (which is a slightly lower spec drive anyway)... a 7200 RPM IDE hard drive really does operate well below the level that the bus and CPU can support.

However, when two IDE devices with different speeds are on the same IDE port they both default to the slowest data transfer rate, if both devices are accessed at the same time. Which is m y main reason for keeping my slow-ass optical drives off my hard disk cables... since it's guarantees that there will be times when both devices are accessed at the same time...
 
Charger,

Thanks for the update. I will forge on with the hard disks on one cable and my opticals on the other for the time being. If start to notice any weirdness when recording...I will revisit it at the time.

Cuzin B
 
charger said:
I don't think having two hard drives on the same IDE bus is any sort of issue at all. Reads and writes are really damn fast on hard drives, compared to the needs of digital audio, as I said earlier. When I copy between drives on the same IDE channel, I get just about the max performance that I get on benchmark tests, and I get better performance from my IDE drives (on teh same channel) than I get from my SATA drive (which is a slightly lower spec drive anyway)... a 7200 RPM IDE hard drive really does operate well below the level that the bus and CPU can support.

However, when two IDE devices with different speeds are on the same IDE port they both default to the slowest data transfer rate, if both devices are accessed at the same time. Which is m y main reason for keeping my slow-ass optical drives off my hard disk cables... since it's guarantees that there will be times when both devices are accessed at the same time...
Click to expand...

That infomation (second paragraph) is no longer correct. It used to be, but with the current generation of IDE devices it no longer is.

Your first configuration was the better one, although ideally you would have one burner, a primary slave. Assuming most of your writting is going from secondary data drive to optical.
 
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