IDE setup...

B

Basslord1124

New member
I was pondering for my computer how I should set up the IDE devices on the computer I am building. I thought what I would do is run one hard drive (OS & apps) as primary master (by itself), then run my other hard drive (audio) on secondary master and CDRW on secondary slave. Then I started thinking maybe I should leave the audio hard drive by itself on secondary and hook the CDRW as slave on the primary. What do you all think?
 
Thanks dachay2tnr...sorry for the repeat, I was kinda in a hurry when I posted that and didn't get a chance to look back through the older posts.
 
sweetnubs

the nubs police is here again. need to clear up more mis-inormation that this site is abound with. never slave a cd-rom or cd-rw etc. to a hard drive, or vice versa. it can limit throughput and they tend not to play nicely with one another. keep your primary drive (os and apps) and secondary drive (data, i.e. audio files) on the same ide cable, master and slave. set up your cd-r on the other ide slot. better yet, get a RAID cofiguration. ignore above said link.
 
Nubs (sorry, assuming your a guy I just can't bring myself to call you "sweetnubs" :D)

If you put both your OS drive and your audio drive on the same IDE channel, wouldn't having both disks on the same channel limit your throughput for recording? I'm looking for a second disk right now and my plan was :

IDE1:
Master - O/S
Slave - DVD-ROM

IDE2
Mastaer - Audio disk
Slave - CD-RW

I can see throughput suffering when I generate a CD-R/CD-RW with files on the audio drive since their both on IDE2. But how is that throughput more important than the throughput I'd gain having my two disks on different IDE channels? Or am I missing something else?


Dave O.
 
i am a man and i am sweet, but don't be afraid to call me sweetnubs. i'm ok and you're ok. i'd really suggest getting and ide expansion card and keeping your hard drives on separate channels that way. they are only $30 or $40 for two more slots. cheap way to get lots of throughput.
 
cd's usually run in DMA mode 2, hard drives DMA 5. (this is more currently, older stuff closes the gap a little more). i'd also suggest just buying two exact versions of the same drive and get a raid controller (for under $100). stripe the two drives, now you got have some speed. you can buy 40 gig drives now for $50. stripe them and you have an 80 gig RAID set-up, use your third drive for storage, back-up etc. amazing times now, 80 gig RAID set-up for under $200! kicks the pants off a single 15,000 rpm scsi for more than 1/2 the price. although the seek times aren't as fast as the scsi set-up. but of course i must make the disclaimer i don't like digital.
 
how so? not shure what you mean. the cheap solution would be to get a pci ide expansion card. the more expensive and better solution would be to get a raid controller and a 2nd drive. dma mode 5 is faster than 2.
 
In your original post you said throughput suffers putting your O/S and your audio disks on separate channels and t oinstead put them on the same one, master and slave. Your second one said it's best to keep your two drives on separate channels.

I sent that reply before you posted the one about setting up a RAID configuration, so I wasn't referring to that one. Yes, I agree that set up would be better still, but this is homerecording.com. I'd bet for most people that would not be in the budget (me included). Heck, I'd bet most people don't even have a second drive just for audio data. :(
 
it suffers more if a cd-rom is slaved to a hard drive. plus a lot of times you get finicky situations when a cd is slaved to a hard drive. so you'd want to slave one hard drive to another in this situation. even better would be to get a ide expansion card, that way you wouldn't have to slave anything.
 
DaveO, set it up as you described. Provided your CD-ROM/DVD-ROM are not ancient (older than 3 years) I foresee no problems. My machine is setup this way with no difficulties and I've set up many other DAW's similiar.

------------------

Quote DaveO

IDE1:
Master - O/S
Slave - DVD-ROM

IDE2
Mastaer - Audio disk
Slave - CD-RW

------------------
 
i've have seen DAW's set up like emeric described that appeared to work fine, but did you ever benchmark them? i have seen quite a few cd-roms slaved to hard drives that have funtioned improperly and it is a common problem.
 
now for those of you who couldn't follow this, that is all right we are all on different learning tracks and we are all special in our own way, let me sum up: your cd-r will "force" your hard drive to run in a different DMA mode. it will choke it, m'kay. you want your new ata133 hard-drive to run at ata133 and not 33 or 66 right?
 
Emeric said:
DaveO, set it up as you described. Provided your CD-ROM/DVD-ROM are not ancient (older than 3 years) I foresee no problems. My machine is setup this way with no difficulties and I've set up many other DAW's similiar.
Click to expand...

Well it's ancient by today's standards but it's not THAT old. It will be two years old in April. The DVD-ROM is the original one I bought with it but I just replaced the old CD-RW drive to get one that had buffer under run protection.

I understand the need to pick and choose capabilities, so yeah I think I'm going to stick with the setup that gives me better disk throughput. Living with slower CD burning isn't too much of a burden to make make sure recording works the way I want it to.
 
To save myself from confusion I'll stick with Emeric's suggestion. You are a wise one there nubs, way over my head that's for sure...honestly I don't think I wanna go with RAID (I'm really not 100% sure what it is anyways). I've already got the motherboard installed anyways...Asus A7S333. Your original suggestion with keeping em on the same ide cable would be nice in the sense that I won't have to worry about ide cable length. Reason is, if I were to run the CDRW and a hard drive on the same controller I'd need a rather long ide cable seeing as how the hard drive is at the bottom of the case and the CDRW is near the top of the case. I really have no idea if the current ide cable will be long enough (I haven't really hooked it up to see...I don't even have the hard drives yet!). But I have a feeling I'll need a longer cable. If I stuck with your suggestion with both drives on the same controller that wouldn't be a problem seeing as how my audio and OS drive are basically going to be on top of one another (my case has 2 hidden 3.5" bays...one of my main reasons for picking this case BTW).

Besides (I'm not really sure if this has anything to do with this or not) but I highly doubt there will be a time I'm using the CDRW and hard drive at the same time EXCEPT when I'm burning a CD. So I would think data transfer would go smoothly. But again, I'm speaking from limited experience here.
 
oh yeah nubs....where are you finding 40 gig hard drives for $50? I'm looking at newegg now and their lowest is $78...even pricewatch's lowest is $66. So if you know some more sites where I can get stuff cheap let me know. Thanks. ;)
 
Basslord1124 said:

Besides (I'm not really sure if this has anything to do with this or not) but I highly doubt there will be a time I'm using the CDRW and hard drive at the same time EXCEPT when I'm burning a CD. So I would think data transfer would go smoothly. But again, I'm speaking from limited experience here.
Click to expand...

This is the crux of it all. It's when you're transferring data between the two, that transfer rate will default to the slowest device. I can't say as though I mix or put down tracks while burning or using the CD-RW in any way.
 
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