Master/Slave stuff

sawman5

Distinguished
Jun 25, 2003
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I am having trouble deciding what settings I should use to get the best performance out of my hard drive and my dvdrw.

I have these:
Maxtor 80 gb, 8 mb cache
WD 40 gb, 2 mb cache
Lite-on DVDRW
Sony 16x DVD

Here is what I was thinking:
1st ide
Master - Maxtor 80 gb
Slave - WD 40 gb
2nd ide
Master - dvdrw
slave - dvd

or

1st ide
master - maxtor 80 gb
slave - dvd
2nd ide
master - wd 40 gb
slave - dvd rw

Or would it be better if I just leave out the WD, I don't think I will be using up the 80 gigs anytime soon.

Any help would be much appreciated. Thank you
 

lunitic

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Aug 6, 2003
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The second is better, but it depends on the way you use your system. Generally speaking you want to keep devices which are used at the same time on different IDE channels. So if you copy a lot of CDs (on the fly) you want to keep the writer and the reader on different channels.
 

SoDNighthawk

Splendid
Nov 6, 2003
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Put the DVD drive as the Hard drive slave. What happens if you use your primary CD-ROM drive as the slave off the primary hard drive 0 then when you play a game or application that needs the CD present in the CD-Drive then both the hard drive and the CD share the same cable and resources this can cause communication lag when a game or application queries the CD-ROM for information on the fly.
If you use the DVD as slave to the hard drive then the DVD movies will play directly off the optical drive seldom asking the primary hard drive for resources you will not see any resource problems.
Finally if the primary CD-ROM drive is on a separate channel/cable (IRQ) then the primary hard disc then it will not slow the hard drive down if it is in use with a game or application cd.
Now it is a PLUS+ To have both the Hard drive and the Burner on separate channels when you are making CD copies you can see how each drive can use system resources on a different IRQ and system controller.
These adjustments only contour a computer and are not mandatory but if you like to have your hardware set-up in a logical manner this is the way to do it with only 2 IDE cables available.

I have mine set-up below you can see how this benefits the drives correctly.

00 00 00 Disk Drive Maxtor 6 E030L0 NAR6
00 01 00 Optical Drive SONY DVD-ROM DDU1621 S1.5 /08/18
00 07 00 Host Adapter ATAPI
01 00 00 Optical Drive SONY CD-ROM CDU5211 YYS7 /08/18
01 01 00 Optical Drive SONY CD-RW CRX220E1 6YS1 /08/18
01 07 00 Host Adapter ATAPI


»§øЫÑighthåwk™ Don't get mad at the player get mad at the game. Hackers drool and Skill's rule.
 

sturm

Splendid
Due to recent stupid lawsuit you are no longer able to use the terms Master and Slave as some idiots may be offended by this. So please refrain from using these extremely racial terms for now on.



LOL
 

Crashman

Polypheme
Former Staff
I'll be sure to let your mistress know that.

<font color=blue>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to a hero as big as Crashman!</font color=blue>
<font color=red>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to an ego as large as Crashman's!</font color=red>
 
Here is what I was thinking:
1st ide
Master - Maxtor 80 gb
Slave - WD 40 gb
2nd ide
Master - dvdrw
slave - dvd

Your first configuration is the best setup, your hardrives will perform better together on the Primary IDE, ATA transfer speeds are the important factors here you're probably running Maxtor ATA-133 and WD at ATA-100, they will work just fine on the same IDE.


Your DVDRW and DVDROM drives both transfer at ATA-33, never combine them with a faster transferring hardrive, and if you can, always set the RW as the Master.





<b>*****</b><b>Missster Anderson!,,,Welcome Back!</b><b>*****</b>
 

sjonnie

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Oct 26, 2001
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Just spend $19 and get an IDE PCI add-in card that will put everything on a separate channel.

<A HREF="http://www.anandtech.com/myanandtech.html?member=114979" target="_new">My PCs</A> :cool: