Adding a hard drive

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My mainboard has 2 Ide connectors.
Currently I have one HD , a CD drive & a CD-RW drive.
The two CD drives share a connector - master & slave.
How should I connect a second HD for best performance?
I think the two hard drives should be on different connectors and then place
a CD drive with each ? It seems 'logical' that the hard drives would perform
better if each were on it's own channel, but this may not necessarily be so
?

And, second question, will the drive letters arrange themselves
automatically, with the current HD having Windows (98SE) remaining as C: ?

 

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Archived from groups: rec.video.desktop (More info?)

The HDs should be "master" devices and the CD and CD-RW whould be the
slaves. In general, the master should always be the faster device and the
slave the slower. On an IDE channel, the slave defers to the master.

strand wrote:

> My mainboard has 2 Ide connectors.
> Currently I have one HD , a CD drive & a CD-RW drive.
> The two CD drives share a connector - master & slave.
> How should I connect a second HD for best performance?
> I think the two hard drives should be on different connectors and then
> place a CD drive with each ? It seems 'logical' that the hard drives would
> perform better if each were on it's own channel, but this may not
> necessarily be so ?
>
> And, second question, will the drive letters arrange themselves
> automatically, with the current HD having Windows (98SE) remaining as C: ?

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Archived from groups: rec.video.desktop (More info?)

I have had difficulty with that. Some documentation states that the speed of
the bus will default to the speed of the slowest device. By sharing a bus
between an ATA-100 hard drive and an ATA-33 burner, it could drop the speed
of the bus to ATA-33.

If it doesn't work, put both hard drives on IDE-0.

Also note that there are differences in the way hard drive firmware behaves.
There have been reports of incompatibilities when drives from two different
manufacturers, ie., Western Digital and Maxtor, share the same bus.

This is old information, and I don't know whether it currently holds.
Personally, I don't mix brands of drives on the same bus, and I don't mix
optical and HD on the same bus. I use very inexpensive Promise add-in disk
controllers to avoid this.

"James McIninch" <james.mcininch@comcast.net.spam> wrote in message
news:L1nbc.164456$Cb.1656666@attbi_s51...
> The HDs should be "master" devices and the CD and CD-RW whould be the
> slaves. In general, the master should always be the faster device and the
> slave the slower. On an IDE channel, the slave defers to the master.
>
> strand wrote:
>
> > My mainboard has 2 Ide connectors.
> > Currently I have one HD , a CD drive & a CD-RW drive.
> > The two CD drives share a connector - master & slave.
> > How should I connect a second HD for best performance?
> > I think the two hard drives should be on different connectors and then
> > place a CD drive with each ? It seems 'logical' that the hard drives
would
> > perform better if each were on it's own channel, but this may not
> > necessarily be so ?
> >
> > And, second question, will the drive letters arrange themselves
> > automatically, with the current HD having Windows (98SE) remaining as C:
?
>
> --
> remove .spam from address to reply by e-mail.

 

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Archived from groups: rec.video.desktop (More info?)

> > The HDs should be "master" devices and the CD and CD-RW whould be
the
> > slaves. In general, the master should always be the faster device
and the
> > slave the slower. On an IDE channel, the slave defers to the master.
> >

> I have had difficulty with that. Some documentation states that the
speed of
> the bus will default to the speed of the slowest device. By sharing a
bus
> between an ATA-100 hard drive and an ATA-33 burner, it could drop the
speed
> of the bus to ATA-33.

Incorrect, at least for recent computers. Ever since the 440BX
motherboard (circa Pentium 350/400), each IDE channel supports
independant timing for each device connected. Each device defaults to
it's highest speed, independant of the other device. Once device will
not slow the other one down. And with busmastering controllers these
days, it doesn't really matter which devices are connected where, in
almost all cases.

In an ideal world, each hd would be master on a channel and the optical
drives would be slave. But I've got 2 hds on the same controller and 2
optical drives on another because of the design of the motherboard and
the 18" length limitation for EIDE drives, and I capture uncompressed
avi files while encoding DVD's and doing various other things at the
same time with no dropped frames or encoding errors.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.video.desktop (More info?)

In article <9uobc.1699$6D1.1176@bignews5.bellsouth.net>,
morrmar@myway.com says...
> > > The HDs should be "master" devices and the CD and CD-RW whould be
> the
> > > slaves. In general, the master should always be the faster device
> and the
> > > slave the slower. On an IDE channel, the slave defers to the master.
> > >
>
> > I have had difficulty with that. Some documentation states that the
> speed of
> > the bus will default to the speed of the slowest device. By sharing a
> bus
> > between an ATA-100 hard drive and an ATA-33 burner, it could drop the
> speed
> > of the bus to ATA-33.
>
> Incorrect, at least for recent computers. Ever since the 440BX
> motherboard (circa Pentium 350/400), each IDE channel supports
> independant timing for each device connected. Each device defaults to
> it's highest speed, independant of the other device. Once device will
> not slow the other one down. And with busmastering controllers these
> days, it doesn't really matter which devices are connected where, in
> almost all cases.
>
> In an ideal world, each hd would be master on a channel and the optical
> drives would be slave. But I've got 2 hds on the same controller and 2
> optical drives on another because of the design of the motherboard and
> the 18" length limitation for EIDE drives, and I capture uncompressed
> avi files while encoding DVD's and doing various other things at the
> same time with no dropped frames or encoding errors.
>

Or consider getting a PCI IDE card (or a PCI SATA and
get SATA drives). Cheap, puts the drive on it's own
cable, no need to try to snake a tiny 18" cable from one
drive to the other.

Most modern systems capture 10Mb/s video without
problems so long as the hard drive is defrag'd and not
much else is going on with the system. That's 704x480
using MJPEG Q20. My 5400rpm 160Gb WD does just fine
capturing at rates up to 12Mb/sec (and a bit more).

 

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Archived from groups: rec.video.desktop (More info?)

"strand" <anyone@hotmail.com> wrote in
news:CDmbc.21876$j57.1229161@news20.bellglobal.com:

> My mainboard has 2 Ide connectors.
> Currently I have one HD , a CD drive & a CD-RW drive.
> The two CD drives share a connector - master & slave.
> How should I connect a second HD for best performance?
> I think the two hard drives should be on different connectors and
> then place a CD drive with each ? It seems 'logical' that the hard
> drives would perform better if each were on it's own channel, but
> this may not necessarily be so ?
>
> And, second question, will the drive letters arrange themselves
> automatically, with the current HD having Windows (98SE) remaining
> as C: ?
>

You'll be OK with the old drive as C: as long as it's the master on the
first IDE controller. The first controller is called IDE0 on some MBs
and IDE1 on others. The second is IDE1 or IDE2. What fun!

Well, it's not difficult. The lower number is the first controller and
the higher number is the second controller.

Another trick is to format the second HD without a primary partition,
only a logical partition. Then it won't become C: by mistake regardless
of the connections.

Gino

--
Gene E. Bloch (Gino) phone 650.966.8481
Call me letters find me at domain blochg whose dot is com

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.video.desktop (More info?)

While this may be case in some instances, I have just added a Maxtor 120 gigHD
(slave) to the same IDE line as my Seagate 80 gig HD (master). And everything
works just fine. On the other IDE line I have a Samsung DVD player (slave) and
a Pioneer DVD burner (master) - again, they all work well.

Just luck?

I have read that you should never put a CD or DVD drive on the same line as a
HD as the HD will then work at the speed of the CD/DVD - but I haven't tried
this myself.


David

Robert Morein wrote:

>
> Also note that there are differences in the way hard drive firmware behaves.
> There have been reports of incompatibilities when drives from two different
> manufacturers, ie., Western Digital and Maxtor, share the same bus.
>
>

 

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Archived from groups: rec.video.desktop (More info?)

On Mon, 05 Apr 2004 12:09:06 +1000, QuietDavid
<davidxxx@REMOVE-ME-TO-REPLYtpg.com.au> wrote:

>I have read that you should never put a CD or DVD drive on the same line as a
>HD as the HD will then work at the speed of the CD/DVD - but I haven't tried
>this myself.

Ancient history.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.video.desktop (More info?)

On Fri, 02 Apr 2004 23:53:15 GMT, James McIninch
<james.mcininch@comcast.net.spam> wrote:

>The HDs should be "master" devices and the CD and CD-RW whould be the
>slaves. In general, the master should always be the faster device and the
>slave the slower. On an IDE channel, the slave defers to the master.

Nope. At least, not any more. If this is a reasonably modern
machine, Master and Slave are merely nominal.

Put the new drive wherever you like (except where your current drive
C: is). Possibly your main consideration will be convenience of
cable routing.