IDE Drive question

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gatorhaus

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I have two harddrives ready to install, as well as a cdrom and cdrw.

Is there a performance advantage of running the two harddrives on separate IDE busses.

i.e. C:Drive on IDE controller 1 and D: on IDE controller 2

both harddrives as masters and run the optical drives as the slaves on each controller.

Here's my thinking. The OS is running on the C:\ drive and my audio apps are running on the D:\ drive. With them on separate controllers they won't have to share the same cable/controller for information, only when it gets to the MoBo buswork.

All for naught??

Any thoughts let me know.

thanks,
larry
 
I doubt you would see much difference as the bottleneck is probably hard drive speed and not the IDE bus.

Ed
 
The IDE bus only allows communication with 1 IDE device on a chain at any given time (each channel only has 1 IRQ). If you want your computer to access both IDE drives simultaneously, they would need to be on different chains/ribbon cables.
 
brzilian is right. However, I'd recommend putting the audio APPS on the c:\ drive with your O/S, and keep the D: drive dedicated to actual audio files & folders (I'm not sure if that's what you meant, but it read the other way). If you do this, it won't matter which contoller the drive is on, because the data is only going to be accessed from a single drive/controller at a time.
 
brzilian is correct, however putting the hard drives on separate channels can have other issues.

Most systems have one or more CD-ROM drives. Putting a hard drive and CD-ROM drive on the same channel can cause problems on it's own. Since the channel only does one drive at a time, and since the access rate for CD-ROM is many times slower than hard drive, any CD-ROM access will stop all hard drive access until the CD-ROM completes.

Putting both hard drives on the same channel avoids this, and as Seanmorse79 has suggested, putting OS on one drive and data files on ther other drive, will probably result in a pretty good combination.

Ed
 
brzilian is correct, however putting the hard drives on separate channels can have other issues.

Most systems have one or more CD-ROM drives. Putting a hard drive and CD-ROM drive on the same channel can cause problems on it's own. Since the channel only does one drive at a time, and since the access rate for CD-ROM is many times slower than hard drive, any CD-ROM access will stop all hard drive access until the CD-ROM completes.

Putting both hard drives on the same channel avoids this, and as Seanmorse79 has suggested, putting OS on one drive and data files on ther other drive, will probably result in a pretty good combination.

Ed
 
Fusion2 said:
buy a controller card for the 2nd drive...
Click to expand...

If you do get a second controller card, you might put the CD-ROM and tape here and separate the hard drives on the main MB controller. Quite often the MB controller will be faster and more reliable than add-on cards.

Ed
 
Ed Dixon said:
If you do get a second controller card, you might put the CD-ROM and tape here and separate the hard drives on the main MB controller. Quite often the MB controller will be faster and more reliable than add-on cards.

Ed
Click to expand...

more reliable, i agree...
faster, depends on pci bus, 800mhz, i expect so...
 
Fusion2 said:
more reliable, i agree...
faster, depends on pci bus, 800mhz, i expect so...
Click to expand...

What are you trying to say?

FSB speeds are not the same thing as PCI speeds. PCI still operates at 33Mhz.
 
Disk conrtroller add-on cards are not all the same. They have various transfer rates depending on what disk I/O modes they support.

Many are slower than the built-in controller on the MB. In most of the PCs I have worked with, the MB controller provided better disk performance than the add-on disk cards. Since it was always there, it also offered a more reliable disk connection. I've seen cases when the system would boot, and not see the disk I/O card, and the drives connected.

I had better luck by putting the hard drives on the MB controller and the CD type slower devices on the other controler. The last system I tested this way had 4 hard drives, 3 CD-ROM units and an ATAPI tape drive.

Ed
 
brzilian said:
What are you trying to say?

FSB speeds are not the same thing as PCI speeds. PCI still operates at 33Mhz.
Click to expand...

no there not but up the fsb by 1mhz and what happens to the pci bus?
 
Ed Dixon said:
Disk conrtroller add-on cards are not all the same. They have various transfer rates depending on what disk I/O modes they support.

Many are slower than the built-in controller on the MB. In most of the PCs I have worked with, the MB controller provided better disk performance than the add-on disk cards. Since it was always there, it also offered a more reliable disk connection. I've seen cases when the system would boot, and not see the disk I/O card, and the drives connected.

I had better luck by putting the hard drives on the MB controller and the CD type slower devices on the other controler. The last system I tested this way had 4 hard drives, 3 CD-ROM units and an ATAPI tape drive.

Ed
Click to expand...

agreed, the CD drive is a good idea, i went that route over a year ago, heh, forgot about the driver issue, i encountered the issue but i was overclocked pretty much of the time, i run newer epox boards now that offer 2 - 6 extra onboard ide slots, promise tx2 cards are famous for loosing the controller driver weekly as i was greeted with the wonderful BSOD, but only if the boot drive was on the controller of course, otherwise the second drive would just not show up on the system...
 
Wow,

thanks for the response. After reviewing everyone's response I ended up doing it the regular way. Both harddrives on one cable and both optical drives on the other. I got to thinking again, I never had a problem during tracking (I have only done 8 tracks) It was only during playback with a buttload of realtime effects. That would not be affected by IDE issues only CPU speed.

OK let me know if I'm thinking correctly or not.

Larry

p.s. Thanks again:)
 
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