The BIG IDE/Disk Speed Question.

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PapillonIrl

PapillonIrl

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I've been told by a guy who's opinion I respect that if you have a 5400rpm drive and a 7200rpm drive on the same IDE cable, the disk speed will only be 5400rpm for both of them.

I've been informed by someone else that you should not slave a CD Drive to a hard drive on an IDE cable.

So WTF do you do if you only have two IDE channels, one 5400HD and one 7200HD ? Make your 7200 the secondary slave ?

Buy another 7200 disk ?

Seriously though, I think alot of people make the investment of buying one 7200rpm disk first when they start getting into hard disk recording, is it true that the disk speed is limited to the speed of the slowest disk on the cable ?

Nathan
 
Almost every IDE controller consists of two channels. Each channel can have a maximum of 2 devices in a master/slave configuration.

If you have two hard drives, you'd typically have one drive on the first channel and a second drive on the second channel. Then you would work out a slaving arrangement with any CDROM devices such that you'd maximize performance (e.g. which devices will you use at the same time the most/least).

If you can't come up with a good solution, you either get one big 7200RPM drive, get a second IDE controller, or go SCSI.

It is not true that a 7200RPM drive will only be as fast as a 5400RPM drive if they are on the same channel. However, both drives will share the channel, and only one drive can access the channel at any given time. So yes, the 7200RPM drive will be held up by the 5400RPM drive if they are both being accessed at the same time...and vice versa really. So it's obviously best to seperate your hard disks.

I doubt your IDE controller only has a single channel unless your computer was made in 1991.

Slackmaster 2000
 
I think you misunderstood slightly...I do have two IDE channels, at the moment one has a 40GB 5400rpm System/Apps/Backups disk as the pri. master, and my 40GB 7200rpm as the pri. slave.

The other channel just has my CD drive connected, but when i try and connect another HD, upon bootup the system tells me that it is not 'an ATAPI device'. Is this caused by a slightly different IDE cable ? BIOS settings ? Jumper settings ?

I guess what I want is Pri Master - System disk, Sec Master - Audio disk and Sec slave - CD drive, right ? I can't see any situation where my CD drive need to be accessed at te same time as my audio disk, with the possible exeption of ripping, which I rarely need to do anyway.

It's just bothering me as I have that feeling of 'nearly done' with my current setup, and when it's 'really done', I want to get 6-8 months of productivity out of it with no tweaking to do apart from Norton Utilities and defrag every week or two.

Anyway, thanks for the reply.

Nathan
 
PapillonIrl said:

Seriously though, I think alot of people make the investment of buying one 7200rpm disk first when they start getting into hard disk recording, is it true that the disk speed is limited to the speed of the slowest disk on the cable ?

Nathan
Click to expand...

Having two drives that operate at two different speeds on the same IDE cable will have no effect on how fast they rotate. One will spin at 5400 and the other at 7200. The only thing that will affect the drives would be the type of cable you use (40pin or 80pin). 40pin is used for ATA-33 and ATAPI devices. 80pin is used for ATA-66 and up. SCSI requires a whole different cable but that's not what you asked.

Go ahead and hook up both drives the way you want.
 
Ok then, the proper setup for you would be:

IDE0 Master: 5400 OS drive
IDE1 Master: 7200 Audio Drive
IDE1 Slave: CDROM

Make sure to disable auto-insert notification on the CDROM though!

This is a pretty typical setup. Problems really arise when you add another device. It is nice to have two controllers in a system.

Slackmaster 2000
 
My friend, who graduated second in his class with a bachelor's degree in Computer Science says that having two drives on the same IDE channel will slow both drives down to the speed of the slowest drive. I'm going to take his word for it. This is what I do:

1st IDE channel: 20 GB aps drive (master) CD-Rom (slave)
2nd IDE channel: 60 GB data drive

That seems to work very well for me.
 
Two drives on the same IDE channel will affect the data transfer rate of both drives, since both drives are trying to share the same effective bandwidth. Placing the drives on seperate channels as Slackmaster2k suggested allows for a higher transfer rate from both drives. Keep in mind that only one drive/device can access an IDE channel at one time (queing) which results in the reduced throughput. Each IDE channel takes priority and you can actually get a threading effect instead of a queing effect when the drives are on seperate channels. This is ideal because both drives, on seperate channels continue to spin at their max rpm(5400-7200) and fill the HD cache (normally 2Mb) and transfer that data immediately. Reading and Writing from a HD is the bottleneck, as long as you can optimize how the HD's are being used and their access to the CPU, then you should be okay. 2 drives on seperate IDE channels will transfer data faster than 2 drives on one IDE channel.
 
Many thanks, folks...I guess the PC came with a 40-pin cable on the second channel, I'll remedy that today and set it up as you guys suggest.

Cheers,

Nathan.
 
hmm...
I read the expression ATA 66 just once in the previous posts.

Very important in this equation: What is the highest ATA mode that the motherboard supports and the same goes for the hard drives.

PapillonIrl,
If you'd be able to come up with some brands and types, I'd be happy to tell you what the possibilities are.

I see a lot of nonsense being posted about hard drives in general on this bbs... Facts are being mixed up and sold for more than it's worth.
 
Myself, who graduated with a degree in Computer Science, says that having two devices on the same IDE channel will not cause both devices to run at the speed of the slowest device. This will in fact only occur (in a way) if both devices are being accessed at the same time.

In real-life tests I have not found higher ATA ratings to be of considerable benefit to recording applications. Specifically, I tested UDMA/33 vs. ATA/66 using both an IBM ATA/66 and a Maxtor ATA/66 drive and saw no increase in dskbench numbers. However, I have not tested ATA/100 or higher. That does not mean that there won't be controller to controller variations. I also did those tests almost two years ago, so things may have change. My only point is that the most important drive statistics are seek time and rotational speed (which are related). A larger cache can also improve performance for your basic applications.

Anyhow, do not slave the CDROM off the OS drive if you're going to do anything that requires both to be used at the same time. For instance, if you plan on burning CD's from data on the OS drive, or use multimedia applications that require a CD (like playing an audio CD via media player), then you should slave the CDROM to the audio drive and disable auto-insert notification. The audio drive will NOT run at the speed of the CDROM drive. That's nonsense.

Slackmaster 2000
 
Anyhow, do not slave the CDROM off the OS drive if you're going to do anything that requires both to be used at the same time. For instance, if you plan on burning CD's from data on the OS drive, or use multimedia applications that require a CD (like playing an audio CD via media player), then you should slave the CDROM to the audio drive and disable auto-insert notification.
Click to expand...
I don't ever do anything like that. All my MP3s and .wavs are on the non-OS data drive. I'd much rather have the drive that performs the most hard-drive intensive tasks on its own IDE channel. Doesn't that make sense?
 
I'd much rather have the drive that performs the most hard-drive intensive tasks on its own IDE channel. Doesn't that make sense?
Click to expand...
As long as nothing else in the chain is doing anything, a drive is essentially on its own channel.
 
ComingInsecond - I'd just like to point out the Computer science is essentially an education in software and programming. If he is like some of the programmers I know, he may be a brilliant guy and still not know a hard drive from a hole in the ground. In any case he is wrong on this point.

Slackmaster pretty much covered everything. I'll just add that a lot of the "folklore" about IDE devices grew out of the very first generation of IDE CD-ROM drives. These drives would in some cases cause a performance hit to anything on the same IDE channel with them. This has been addressed and any but the very oldest IDE CD drives will not cause this problem. Basicly any modern IDE device wil not interfere with another, so long as it is not being used.

All other considereations aside, IDE controllers do not like it when attached devices try to do reads & writes at the same time. I always suggest the following IDE device layout -

Primary Master- Your system hard drive with OS & applications.
Primary Slave - A CDR recorder (if you have one)
Secondary Master - You big fast recording hard drive
Secondary Slave - Your CD-ROM, or DVD drive

With this setup you insure that for the most common situations neither IDE controller is trying to do both reads & writes at the same time. For example -

* Installing apps from CD to system drive
* recording or backing up data from data drive to CDR
* duping one CD to a CDR
 
Sorry to keep harping on,but there is one issue still not addressed...what is this 'Pri. Master is not ATAPI compatible' message I'm getting. I've just spent a couple of hours trying to get my drive configuration how RWhite suggested, and I cannot seem to get the machine to boot AT ALL with the HD's on different cables.

I'll try to give you guys some details if you don't mind...I know some of you are pretty experienced with computer hardware.

The configuration (new) had a 40GB 5400rpm drive on one channel, with the jumper settings to master, and the CD-Drive on the other channel, jumper settings also to master.

I added a 7200rpm 40GB drive to the same cable as the first HD, it appeared as pri slave.

Just now, I tried the following.

Different IDE cables on both channels
Setting the jumper to slave on CD-ROM
Trying to detect drives in BIOS setup with different combinations of 1,2 and 3 drives connected(inc. the CD drive).

I can't get any joy whatsoever...I either get a 'boot failure' message, or a "pri/sec master/slave" (depending on channel and jumper setting used) "is not ATAPI compatibe".

I can't find anything in the BIOS setup which mentions ATAPI, apart from when the CD drive is detected.

Now I'm tired and I want a beer. I could do with someone shedding some light on this, I've anyones so inclined ?

Nathan
 
PapillonIrl,
Try setting the jumpers on all of your drives to "Cable Select".
Then the drive connected to the jack on the end of IDE cable will become Master on that channel, and the drive connected to the middle jack - slave.
See if that works.
 
cominginsecond said:
I don't ever do anything like that. All my MP3s and .wavs are on the non-OS data drive. I'd much rather have the drive that performs the most hard-drive intensive tasks on its own IDE channel. Doesn't that make sense?
Click to expand...

The CDROM drive is moreoften accessed while the OS drive is in use than when the audio drive is in use. Having the CDROM as slave to the audio drive will not impact the audio drive's performance as long as a) you disable auto-insert notification and b) your computer is not 12 years old.

Pap, I think webstop is on to something here...

This isn't *always* the rule I've found with certain hardware, but you should be putting the master device at the end of the cable, and the slave in the middle.

Slackmaster 2000
 
With the newer ATA-100 & above drives, it is a good idea to put the master at the end of the cable regardless of whether its set yo cable select or not. You also need a 40 pin, 80 wire cable to get full perfomance from ATA-66 or above drives.

If a CD-ROM is by itself on a controller, it will generally work whether you have it set to either master or slave. With hard drives, generally if you have one set to either Master or slave, there needs to be another drive on the same cable jumpered to the opposite setting, or the drive will not work right. The exception to this is Maxtor - their jumper settings for Master are the same as for a single drive.

PapillonIrl, I have seen that message before. It usually indictes that something is not jumperd properly, or a cable is defective. It sounds like you have checked all those things already. Double check your jumpers yet again. Also make sure in the BIOs your drives are set for LBA (usually option "2" in an Award BIOS)
 
Aha ! Got the bugger. :)

Here's a link for anybody interested or with a similar problem...

http://www.seagate.com/support/kb/disc/ref/jumper_settings.htm

You were right, RWhite, it was jumpered incorrectly. As soon as I jumpered it to 'Master with no-ATA compatable slave', it worked.

The master is not on the end of the cable though...the cables I have at the moment are not long enough to allow that, but I will have a look around. I robbed one of the cables I used from an old Pent MMX...bad idea ?

Anyway, sincere thanks for your advice and patience with this one, you guys were a great help.

Nathan
 
If it works, cool. But be aware again that if you are using an old 40 wire cable, with a new drive & new motherboard, then you are not getting full performance.

I recently picked up some special IDE cables at a computer show. They are available up to 36", they are 80 wire cables but are round shielded cables rather than the ribbon type. Colored too, so it's easy to tell at a glance which wire goes where. Not cheap, but I considered it worthwhile.

Here's an example:

http://www.computers4sure.com/product.asp?productid=369750&iid=939
 
When you said 'not cheap', I was expecting more...I guess I'm used to seeing crazy prices for audio cables. I may well invest in one or two of those in the future.

I've moved some disks closer together, and managed to get the Audio master at the end of the cable. I've also made sure that the cable in question, the one with the audio drive and cd on it, is the newest one, which came with the motherboard...so at least I should be getting full performance from my recording disk.

I've also formatted my Win2000 partition as I decided I really didn't need a dual-boot after all. I've moved the Win98 pagefile onto the the formatted partition.


The only thing bothering me now is that I am still getting the dual-boot option when I boot up...it listed the two OS's even though I obviously can't boot into 2000 any more.

Anyone got any idea where I zap that (an .ini file I assume) ?

Cheers,

Nathan
 
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