Why (technically) would you want to run a CDROM & HDD on the same channel?

I have a question that relates to this topic...I hope. A friend of mine who helped me put together my system said that my primary IDE is ATA100, and the secondary IDE is rated at only ATA66. So, what I ended up doing was hook it up the way RichHead has it.

My MOBO is an ASUS P4T533-C. I'm thinking that I would have no problem reconfiguring to the recommended way. Any comments? I just read in my manual that I need to make sure that I have ATA100 IDE cables though. Thanks in advance.

Christian
 
Thats not a bad idea James.....I was just looking for more "proof in the pudding" before I started to tear my system up. But ok, what the hell. I'll run some tests this weekend using my fastest drives.

Sorry if you guys feel I'm putting this in the wrong light.....

Since I have read that here, I have been going over all the BBS's that I normally attend. I can't even find one peice of evidence (except in cases where people had slower HDD) of this being a plus from all of the computer speed freaks I know.

James, one question though? Did you run any tests? I mean, how did you KNOW you were getting better performance? Certainly there must have been something that hit you and you said "wow, this is faster now"
 
RichHead said:
Thats not a bad idea James.....I was just looking for more "proof in the pudding" before I started to tear my system up. But ok, what the hell. I'll run some tests this weekend using my fastest drives.
Click to expand...

That will be good. Post here your result... :)

Sorry if you guys feel I'm putting this in the wrong light.....
Click to expand...

No problem, I didn't think you ment to be anyway...

James, one question though? Did you run any tests? I mean, how did you KNOW you were getting better performance? Certainly there must have been something that hit you and you said "wow, this is faster now"
Click to expand...

The test can be done in many ways. My test took SONAR 2.2 XL, and see the "disk activity monitoring". Several projects I've done run my system to "Drop out". Since I set the drive in "faster" way, it doesn't even hit 60% of disk activity. I also did burn several data using NERO to my 4X4X24 CDRW, and it's faster about 5~7 minutes for ~620MB. I also use Norton system benchmark. I did also Sissoft Sandra benchmark utility. All shown better speed... you can do similiar test too...
;)
Jaymz
 
Richhead - by all means, if things are working OK for you and you are happy with your system the way it is, then you don't need to change it.

If you want some more technical info on the IDE issue, there are websites out there that have what you need -

Tomshardware.com
Extremetech.com
Hardwarecentral.com
motherboards.org

.. to name a few. Do some searches. Also Maximum PC magazine is a good source for hardware testing (although they don't post their magazine articles on their website)

As for a good real world test, version 5.03 of Roxio EZCD creator has a "Smartburn" setting. This auto sets your write speed to the fastest your system will support. Select this setting and then copy a CD from one drive to another. It will show you the actual read/write speed at the bottom of the screen. Try it first with both CD drives on the same controller. Then put them on seperate controllers and try it again. You will see a BIG difference in speed.
 
It's not really a matter of getting better performance in the way you're meaning, it's simply a matter of configuring the system in an optimal manner for audio recording.

However, if you disable auto insert notification on your CDROM drive, which I recommend, then it really doesn't matter where you stick it. (this disables windows polling the drive constantly to see if a disk has been inserted, which may or may not cause hiccups if that drive is a slave to your audio drive)

That aside, you should configure the system such that it works well for how YOU will use it.

Scenario: if you plan on using the CDROM drive to transfer tracks and such to your audio drive frequently, or to rip audio tracks to your audio drive, then it would be best to have the CDROM drive on the same channel as the OS drive. Copying large amounts of data from one drive to another drive on the same channel will be slower, try it.

Scenario: you plan on installing lots of different software from CDROM's, or play lots of games that require the disk to be in the drive at all times. In this case, it might be beneficial to have the CDROM drive as a slave to your audio drive.

Scenario: your CDROM drive is actually a CDRW. CDRW's can get very picky when your trying to burn data located on a drive on the same channel...especically the faster ones. In this case, you should pick a drive that will always contain the data you want to burn and stick the CDRW on the opposite channel. This is my getup, and I have the CDRW on the same channel as my OS drive. I have a partition on my audio drive used for "junk" and that's where I stick everything when I need to burn (unless I'm just buring audio files, which are already on that drive).

Slackmaster 2000
 
Thanks Slack, thanks RWHITE. I have been frequenting a couple of those sites you mentioned RWHITE.

Well whatever, points taken guys. And really there is nothing "wrong" with my system. Maybe I just needed a reason to mess with it again....try something new. Probably time to kill this thread, I'll post on a new thread with whatever I find out.

I am going to try 6, maybe 7 different tests.
 
The way my setup is right now (it's still needs work to get it running but for these purposes I can explain what I got so far) is actually the opposite of what's been suggested here. Here's what mine looks like:

Primary:
Master-OS/Apps HDD

Secondary:
Master-Audio HDD
Slave-CDRW

Not sure why some of you want a CDROM anyways. :rolleyes: I don't think there's really ever gonna be much of a time when I'm using both the audio HDD and CDRW at the same time...except maybe when I'm burning a CD. Regardless I don't think performance would be an issue there since one will be reading and one will be writing. And even if there IS a performance issue it's not like I can't copy those files to the OS/Apps HDD then burn the CD like that. I don't see how with my setup there "would" be problems, and if there are please let me know.
 
Ok, check this out(this is all with a Digi001)

My setup was:
PrimaryIDE-->
Master: System(apps) HDD
Slave: Audio HDD

SecondaryIDE-->
Master: CDRW

I was getting some clicks and the occasional disk speed error, so I figured I'd try this setup:

PrimaryIDE-->
Master: System(apps) HDD
Slave: CDRW

SecondaryIDE-->
Master: Audio HDD

Now I can't even playback audio with PT for more than 2 seconds. So I'm totaly screwed.

I did some benchmarks, and my audio drive get like 2.3 mb/s with HDTach, and my system gets around 57. I'm not sure whats wrong. Its all got 80pin cable, its running ATA100. I'm at a loss.
 
Jfogarty you may want to go into the device manager and set the transfer speed for you ide channels (both of them(more specifically the second one)) to dma if available ( i assume you are running XP if not you can basically do the same under 2k and 98 (not sure about ME)) it sounds like it might using 33 instead of either 66/100/133 what ever your motherboard/HDD can handle.
if not post some more specs chipset and mobo manufacturer.. also drive specs would be nice ...ahh........ something else to check ALL IDE cables are not created equal .good chance the cable is an older cable (compare the two cables do the strands on one cable seem smaller or finer than the strands on the second IDE channel if so you are using an old cable you need a newer cable) *generally* not always at ata66 or higher cable will *often* have blue plugs at the end *disclaimer* not always if your arent sure try swapping cables and see if the performance gets better on your audio drive but worse on the system drive. if so replace the cable
randy5235
 
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