Connecting up HDDs and CDs

[Bursar 0]

This has probably been asked before, but I can't seem to figure out the right phrases to use to search the forums for it.

 

I currently have 2 IDE HDDs, and a CD drive. I'm going to be adding an additional CD-RW/DVD combo drive to the system, and was curious about the best way to hook it up.

 

I only have 2 IDE channels on my mobo, and currently I have the 2 disks chained together and the CD is on its own.

 

My C drive has WinXP and my applications, the D drive has all my games on.

 

I will also want to do CD-CD copying.

 

So, should I hook up the C drive with the CD on one channel, and the D drive and the CD-RW on the other? Or is there a better solution?

 

Sorry for being dense, but it's been ages since I've had to think about this stuff and can't for the life of me remember the best solution

[adamvjackson 0]

I would leave both the hard drives on the primary channel, and install the new cdrw/dvd drive as the master on the secondary channel.

[BladeRunner 0]

In that situation I've always gone for:

 

Primary Master: Main HD

Primary Slave: Second HD

 

Secondary Master: CD-ROM / DVD-ROM

Secondary Slave: CD-RW

 

Currently because of RAID controllers I'm able to hang all the HD's off of the RAID controller and my DVD-ROM & CD-RW each get Master on their own IDE channel.

So like you it's been a while since I've had to think about running four devices off of on-board controllers

[Bursar 0]

Okily dokily, that's what I'll do then. I knew I could count on you guys to point me in the right direction

[Jerry Atrik 0]

it doesnt really matter.

it's all gotta go thru the system bus anyway and ide is limited to single duplex.

[EddiE314 0]

you could always get an extra ata100 or 133 controller card

[Bursar 0]

I could, but I'm not sure how many PCI ports I have left. I also have a FireWire card I need to bung in for my digi-camcorder.

 

I'll see how I get on. If things start getting bogged down, then I'll consider it.

[Tomay 0]

There is something else. I have

primary master: Maxtor 40gb

primary slave: Maxtor 40gb

 

secondary master: cdrom

secondary slave: cdrw

 

I use nero burning rom and when I try to copy a cd on the fly, nero compains about source and destinarion device beeing on the same cable.

 

I don't use on the fly copying, but is it better to have each cd device on different cables?

[adamvjackson 0]

In a perfect world, yes, I would have seperate IDE channels for each device, and if I am correct, that's how SerialATA will be. Also, I would recommend you set your cdrw drive to master, and the cdrom as a slave.

[AndyFair 0]

Quote:

...if I am correct, that's how SerialATA will be...

SerialATA will only have one device per cable/connection.
The advantage is the size of the connector - only small connector with a few pins (can't remember how many, but it's only about 6) - which means that you can get several SerialATA connectors in the same space as 2 or 4 IDE connectors.
At the moment, they are limited to 133Mb/s, but that's more a limitation of motherboard designs (i.e. the SerialATA controllers are connected via the PCI bus). Second gen SerialATA should transfer at 300Mb/s...can't wait

Rgds
AndyF

[reversing_drive 0]

I would go with tis configuration:

 

Primary 1 [HD1 - With WinXP]

Slave 1 [CD Drive]

 

Primary 2 [CDRW/DVD Drive]

Slave 2 [HD2]

 

That way data transfer between hard disks is faster (different channels), so you could have the Page file on the second.

Faster transfer from HD1 to Cd Buring (different Channels)

More reliable Disk to Disk copying, again because they are on different channels.

 

Anyway thats what i'd do,

 

Oh yeah when playing games that require a CD, faster data transfer, different channels.

And when watching DVD's different channel from Operating system, so probably smoother.

 

Cheers,

[Dirty Harry 0]

Quote:

I use nero burning rom and when I try to copy a cd on the fly, nero compains about source and destinarion device beeing on the same cable.

Nero complains, but it doesn't cause any trouble for me.

I have four channels (built in HPT controller) so all four devices are masters in their own right.

HD1 (HPT-1)
HD2 (HPT-2)
CD-R
CD-RW

H.

[adamvjackson 0]

I thought that you should not connect ATAPI devices to RAID controllers... I had read somewhere about the interface being slightly different, and some controllers/optical drives had problems.

[pr-man 1]

Guys I have the same situation as the poster

 

I have 2 ata-100 Hds and 1 dvd-rom drive and cd-rw drive. I do have room to use a ATA-100 promise Ultra100TX2 controller I have if need be but would it be better and faster performance wise to have both HDs on the mobos primary channel since the mobo supports ata-100 and have the dvd-rom drive and cd-rw on the secondary channel? Thx

 

sorry about asking in this thread but I did not want to create a whole new post about the same topic

[Dirty Harry 0]

Don't know about PCI-card contollers for sure, as I have Abit boards with integrated Highpoint (HPT) raid controllers. Here the manual clearly states that you should not connect "non-disk devices" like CD's to the HPT controller.

 

BTW, each controller (normally) has two connectors, and you can, using the master-slave setting, connect two devices to each. As I've understood it: if you have two controllers = you have four connectors = eight IDE channels.

 

Finally, if you only need to connect four devices I've never heard any arguments why you shouldn't connect each device as a master on its own channel. Chaing up two devices means that they compete about the available transfer rate in the channel, and that can not speed things up.

I doubt that you will detect any speed difference depending on which controller or connector you use for a certain device (as long as its not slower than the device), but thats easy enough to test, just switch the connector for a HD between two controllers and measure with HD-tach in between.

 

H.

[Admiral LSD 0]

Quote:

Don't know about PCI-card contollers for sure, as I have Abit boards with integrated Highpoint (HPT) raid controllers. Here the manual clearly states that you should not connect "non-disk devices" like CD's to the HPT controller.

Which model HPT is that? Highpoint mention on their website that the HPT372 (which I'm not saying is the one on your board) is backward compatible with all ATA devices. They make no mention of it being limited to disk devices like a couple of their other controllers.

I'm not quite sure whether to believe it or not though...

[Dirty Harry 0]

I have three of 'em:

 

Abit KG7 with HPT 370A

Abit KA7 with HPT 370

Abit BE6 with HPT 366

 

All three manuals contain the recommendation "Thus we suggest you don't connect non-disk devices that use ATA/ATAPI interfaces such as CD-ROM to the HPT3xx connector." The manuals are downloadable on Abits site (at least they used to be) if you don't believe...

 

Besides, the ATAPI interface, which a CD rom uses, is not precisely the same as the ATA 100 or ATA 66 interface. Just compatible.

 

But why on earth would you want to connect a CD to the Highpoint controller in the first place ? You bought the thing to get your HD's up to speed, didn't you ?

 

H.

[Admiral LSD 0]

Quote:

The manuals are downloadable on Abits site (at least they used to be) if you don't believe...

Thats not really what I meant.... I was actually referring to Highpoints claim that the HPT372 is backward compatible with all ATA devices. (unlike all their other controllers that I looked at, this one didn't explicitly mention it was limited to disk devices.)

Quote:

But why on earth would you want to connect a CD to the Highpoint controller in the first place ? You bought the thing to get your HD's up to speed, didn't you ?

I don't intend to use them for RAID purposes but rather to put all 4 of my IDE devices on seperate channels. I only have one HDD, the other three IDE devices are an LS-120 drive, a DVD-ROM and a CD-RW.

[Dirty Harry 0]

Well, I guess you could buy an PCI - IDE controller card... Likely to be cheaper (?) than the a RAID controller. On the other hand, I guess you could keep those 4 devices you've got just straight on the standard 2 IDE channels, why do you want them as four master devices? You propably need to experiment a little to find the best master/slave combination. I guess I'd start with CD and DVD on one cable, HD and LS-120 on the other (unless you copy DVD's to CD's of course)

[Admiral LSD 0]

It'll be integrated onto the motherboard (An Epox 8K5A2+) so buying an extra controller is probably going to be the more expensive option.

 

The LS-120 is a PIO device (and not a DMA device like the other three) which throws a huge spanner in the works. I want at least that to have it's own channel so it can't screw with anything. The hard drive is less important but that'll be on the RAID controller anyway. I'd rather the CD and DVD-ROM have their own channels too but if that isn't possible I guess they'll just have to share the remaining channel on the regular IDE controller.

[Dirty Harry 0]

Makes sence, altough keep an eye on the HD, that is is performing as fast as it can, thsts one of those things that makes a noticeable speed difference for the user. Try the LS-120 on the HPT controller, if everything works dandy then you have every device on its own controller.

 

H.

[Admiral LSD 0]

If I were to do that wouldn't I lose the ability to boot from the LS-120? What I was planning on doing (bearing in mind that this is all hypothetical until I actually buy the board) was putting the LS-120 and one of the CD-ROMS, most likely the DVD, on the motherboard ports to enable the machine to be booted from either of them and then putting the burner and the hard drive on the RAID controller. If the HPT372 lives up to its backwards compatibility claims (something I have yet to get a straight yay or nay answer to) that shouldn't be a problem but if it only allows hard drives (the Highpoint data didn't mention this specifically like it did with the other controllers) then there might be a problem...

[Mr.Guvernment 0]

Quote:

it doesnt really matter.
it's all gotta go thru the system bus anyway and ide is limited to single duplex.

I know adaptec does not like if both your cd drives are on the same IDE

so i usually go 1 hd and 1 cd on 1 ide chan and other on th other to mix it up.

i don't use adaptec any mroe thought, but i still do it.

[dave.green1 0]

I have the same prob with Nero.

 

Prime Mast 20gb

Prime Slave 13gb

Sec Mast DVD-ROM

Sec Slave CD-RW

 

CD-CD copying doesn't haappen anymore for me. And, quite frankly, it pisses me off.

 

I keep making coaster whenever I try to copy a CD, and i haven't been able to figure out why....

 

System Specs

 

PIII Intel 550

256 MB RAM PC133

Prime Mast 20gb

Prime Slave 13gb

Sec Mast DVD-ROM

Sec Slave CD-RW

 

 

Any ideas?

[adamvjackson 0]

Is there a reason the CDRW is not set as master? I've seen in many instances where some writers/boards/ide controllers will have compatiblity issues when the CDRW drive is set as a slave.

 

[Edit]

What are you trying to copy when you copy CDs? Do these discs have copy protection? Are you copying "On the Fly" or are you creating an image to burn from first? If you do a lot of CD copying I would honestly recommend CloneCD, and you create a disc image first, then burn from that image file.

[/Edit]