Configuration for IDE devices?

[washe]

Ok I will get my new drive tomorrow 80 Gig Western Digital my 8MB cache and CD-RW (that lite-on was dirty cheap at $38 ), currently I have one HD and a DVD Rom?

What would be the best configuration speaking performance wise and placement?

I will place the new HD at first Ide device make a 10 Gig partition for winxp, another 60 Gig partition for data and another 10 Gig partition with fat32 to share data with linux, then I will slave the old harddisk an put linux......

I will hook up the DVD as first and the CD-RW as slave?

The two harddrives will be at the bottom rails? and the DVD at the top and the CDRW and the 3rd space...

any suggestions?

[Gettinbye]

Let me see if I understand you:
First IDE channel:your 2 hard drives
Second Ide channel: your two optical devices(DVD + CDRW)
Yes, that's a good configuration...you won't be slowing down your CD burning by reusing the same IDE channel for data transfer, also:
Sometimes one device on an ide channel will slow down another device on the same IDE channel, so if your original hard drive is running UDMA5, and your new hard drive CAN run at UDMA6, it may slow down the new drive to match the original(i.e.; both running at UDMA5). This is MUCH better than sharing HDD's with optical drives, as it may slow down your hard drive to the standard UDMA2 that most optical devices run at.

[tony_j15]

If you want to do a lot of direct cd copying, put the opticals on seperate channels

[washe]

The DVD is mostly used to see movies.... I got to give so use to that 21" monster........

Question ATA66 are UDMA5? and ATA100 UDMA6?

and about the slow down will be noticeable or just a small %, in that case I can reduce the data partition and leave it to linux, that way I will have only one drive... I dont think I can fill 50 gig very quicly, I have lived around 2 years with only 15 gig.....

[Gettinbye]

I believe UDMA5 is ata100, UDMA6 is ata133...
In general, IDE devices run at the speed of the slowest device on the channel, this is usually the case, but not always. Running more than one IDE device per channel shouldn't slow anything down unless you're adding a slower device (such as an optical drive) to a channel that is using a faster device (such as an ata100 or ata133 HDD). So if your new HDD is ata133, and your older one is ata100, chances are you'll be running both at ata100 if they're on the same IDE channel-probably not a difference you'll notice unless you're running some high-end games or apps...
As far as direct CD copying...you WILL get faster copying with optical drives on separate IDE channels, BUT IMO it's not worth slowing down a hard drive ALL the time to get faster copying.

[washe]

well old drive its ata66, new one will be ata100.... the only ones i know at ata133 are the maxtor's