Best configuration for my IDE hard drives, DVD & CDRW?
 

I’m wanting to know which is the best configuration for my 2 EDIE hard drives, EIDE DVD ROM & EIDE CDRW.

Here’s what I have:

EIDE ATA 100 40Gb Hard disk

EIDE UDMA 66 20Gb Hard disk

EIDE SONY DVD ROM DDU1211 (40/12)

EIDE Yamaha CDRW CRW2100EZ (16/10/40)

My motherboard has 4 IDE ports (I can connect 8 IDE devices).
Is it best (for hard drive speed & CD writer performance) to have each device on their own separate port, using all 4 ports?
Or would it be OK (or better) to just use 2 of the IDE ports for all 4 devices?

If I just used to IDE ports I was thinking of setting it up like this (would this be the best solution?)

IDE port 1
Master - EIDE ATA 100 40Gb Hard disk
Slave - EIDE SONY DVD ROM DDU1211 (40/12)


IDE port 2
Master - EIDE Yamaha CDRW CRW2100EZ (16/10/40)
Slave - EIDE UDMA 66 20Gb Hard disk

I understand that if I had both hard drives on the same port that the ATA 100 hard disk would only run at the slower UDMA 66 (like the 20Hb hard disk). Is this true?

If you can conect 8 drives this means you have 2 RAID ports? I'm not sure.

Myc cousin conected his 4 devices as you suggested, and suffered a performance hit as his cd-rom was sharing the ide port with a much-faster hard drive. Worse still, we had trouble enabling "DMA" on the second IDE channel under Win98 OS2. Once enabled the cd-writer wasn't recognised - even scanning for drives in the BIOS proved futile!

This problem dissapeared when I re-connected the drives as suggested in my cd-writer's instructions:

Primary Master = fastest hard drive you've got
Primary Slave = your other hard drive

Secondary Master = CD-ROM/DVD drive
Secondary Slave = CD-Writer

Connecting in this way made no problems at all with copying or BIOS recognition - or DMA!

To be totally honest, I don't know whether or not connecting your drives on their own seperate ports would improve compatibility or performance, or whether mixing ATA-100/66 drives lowers performance.

However, I'd say that if you've got the capability to use ATA-100/RAID then by all means get the most out of your system that you can. Sticking cd-roms together creates less problems than mixing them with hard-drives.

Sorry I can't offer you any more info. Perhaps someone more informed can recommened an even better configuration. :-)

Thanx mate!
Yea that's right, 2 of the IDE ports can be used as RAID. But at the moment I don't have RAID set up, I have the ports set up for ATA 100 (it's changeable by altering jumpers on the motherboard).

Thanx fot the advice :D

Your welcome, mate.

Iv'e just read something on the following link, regarding the actual difference in everyday operational terms, between ATA-66 and ATA-100 drives. Apparantly due to the current phisical limitations of even the best ATA-100 drives, there's little difference between the two interface standards.

Thus if this info is anything to go by, sticking ATA-100 and ATA-66 drives together is perfectly feasible: the average read sped in both ATA-66 and ATA-100 interfaces is 32MB/sec on a PIII 700MHz (only the "burst" speed is increased with ATA-100, particualar to only a small area of your computing needs).

This situation isn't likely to change within the next couple of years.

####://www.tech-review.com/review.pl?id=184

Now I bet somebody will invent a 48x burner to prove everyone wrong!!