IDE - how to connect???

[Krabet]

Hi;

If I have one HD, one CD-R and CD-ROM what is the best
way to connect them by IDE so I can easily (without errors
and fast ) burn a copy of cd in CD-ROM (on the fly).

Is Pri_IDE master HDD and cd-rom slave, Sec_IDE master CD-R ok?? or better one is Pri_IDE master HDD, Sec_IDE master CD-R and slave CD-ROM??

[butch81385]

i have the second set up, and it works good for me... i dont know if its the best setup though...

[EvilCrow]

Second setup should work best.

[Martoch]

Welcome to TechIMO!


I vote or the first setup IF you are going to be burning CD-CD...if you have the CD-RW and the CD-ROM on the same IDE ribbon, they are sharing resources and the data transfer rate will suffer.
If you do the following:

Pri IDE Master = Hard Drive
Pri IDE Slave = CD-ROM

Sec IDE Master = CD-RW

You can copy from your CD-RW to your hard drive easily AND burn CD's disc-disc at the optimum speed as well.

Just my .02...


Mike

[meese]

Optical devices are different animals compared to Hard drives. Data transfers to the device will be limited by the slowest device. I do not recommend mixing hard drive and optical devices on the same ide cable. The optical device will jeopardize the transfer rate of the hard drive. And to verify my point read below:

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And remember(I didn't know this till last week), your cable will run at the speed of the slowest item on your IDE cable!!! DO NOT PUT UR CD-ROM ON THE SAME IDE CABLE AS UR HARD DRIVE!!!! Cd-roms run at ATA33, and so your hard-drive will too What a waste! Why isn't that in the manual? I'm changing mine today - early New Year's resolution.

http://www.pcmag.com/print_article/0...a=34282,00.asp

[Eli]

Originally posted by meese
And remember(I didn't know this till last week), your cable will run at the speed of the slowest item on your IDE cable!!! DO NOT PUT UR CD-ROM ON THE SAME IDE CABLE AS UR HARD DRIVE!!!! Cd-roms run at ATA33, and so your hard-drive will too

Unless things have changed recently, that's a myth. Each device on an IDE channel can only be accessed one at a time anyway, so there's no reason for the faster device to slow down to the speed of the slower one. SCSI has a limitation similar to that (devices should be in the order of fastest-slowest away from the controller). IDE has no such difficulty.

Martoch has it right. That's the setup I use.

[meese]

If thats the case, thanks for the info Eli and Martoch. Was there ever a time when IDE had a problem like this? I know I read something somewhere that lead me to believe the opposite.

[Martoch]

Originally posted by Eli


Unless things have changed recently, that's a myth. IDE has no such difficulty.

Martoch has it right. That's the setup I use.

Thanks, that's what I've learned over the years to be quite honest...I've tested the theory out several times, the HD was NOT slowed down at all by the optical drive.

meese-There are numerous articles pointing to the fact that a hard drive should NEVER share an IDE with an optical drive, but I'm not sure if, in fact, that were ever true. Maybe so, but not today if you ask me. Sometimes these things can be so confusing, keeping up with today's computer world is almost impossible...that's why I stick with TechIMO!

[Eli]

I honestly doubt it was ever actually true. People who believe that one are generally too new to remember having to hook up a CD drive's 40 pin ribbon cable to a sound card and configuring DOS drivers.

[Xaotic]

It still applies, but only if you are mixing PIO only mode devices with ATA spec devices. It will drop the channel into PIO mode.