Adding 2nd Hard Drive

[69mako]

Hello all,
This is my first post and I hope this is in the correct forum. I am going to purchace a 2nd HD tonight and I want to make sure that I instill it correct to achieve the best performance. It will strictly be used for multimedia appications (copying DVD, CD, and Capture)

Here is my currect settup

1.8 Ghz P4
512 MB PC800 mem.
WIN 98SE (Upgrading to XP Home this weekend)
40 GB Maxtor 7200RPM 2MB (Primary Master)
Pioneer DVD-ROM (Secondary Master)
SONY DVD-Writer (Secondary Slave)

Where would the best place to install the 2nd HD? It will be a 120 GB 7200RPM 8MB Western Digital. I was thinking on installing it in place of the Pioneer and putting the Pioneer as a Primary slave? I use the Pioneer drive for extracting DVD and all of my software (games and music CD's). The Sony is for burning DVD/CD and extracting CD's.

Any opinions or suggestions?

Thanks in advance,
Mike

[FKrueger]

I'm far from an expert, but I have plenty of room in my pc, I spaced my 2nd drive 1 empty slot between it and the 1st drive, both drives are on IDE1 as I have read if you put a drive with a cdrom, dvdrom, cdrw, they run at 33mhz, thus the different cables from the motherboard, and you will drag the harddrive down to that, don't know if it's true or not. I have not tried setting them to cable select yet, maybe next time, if the 40 gig is older than say a year I would (and did on mine), partition it to 30gig as the primary and the 90 as the extended, put my movies on the extended partition. I used partion magic which I like, not fdisk. Just my preference. Set the jumper to master, and my original drive to slave and formated it. Both my cdrw and dvdrom are on IDE2. Do make sure to use the right flat cable from the motherboard.

[marvel2020]

The way mine's is setup is ....


IDE1 ---- 80Gb Hardrive ( Master)
120GB Harddrive ( Slave)

IDE2 ---- Pioneer 104 DVD-rw ( Master)
Liteon DVD Rom Drive ( Slave)



But because my motherboard has an extra 2 IDE ports for running Raid etc..

IDE3... Liteon 24xspeed CD-RW (slave)
40GB Harddrive (Slave)

IDE4... Free at the mintue, but will have an extra 2 harddrives connected here.



I'm just waiting on my Round IDE leads to come then i'll be making a few changes to the above.

[maestro5050]

Just pop the new hard drive into the slave position on the primary IDE channel. This way you do not have to swap the optical drives around, and it is the best overall configuration for your needs. I say this because when you are burning you will have the data reading from one IDE channel and writing to the other IDE channel. There is a much smaller chance of having problems doing it this way.

For future reference, you may want to post this in the computer forum next time.

[vivisimonvi]

Trying to add a second internal hard drive may cause you headaches. I myself have installed a second Western Digital drive under Win 98SE on my old computer, it wasn't easy.

I've been using external hard drives lately for capturing, I must say some are impressive. Using a USB 2.0 connection (if your computer has USB 2.0), you can transfer up to 480 Mbps.

For example, I can capture almost uncompressed AVI video at 720X480 resolution (with a compression ratio as small as 2 to 1). Firewire MIGHT be faster I have no experience on that.

I figure if I wear and tear this thing bad enough, I can easily replace it without having to change BIOS settings, opening up the CPU and such. I literally use my drive 24/7 around the clock for capturing/converting. I have no complaints.

[§kipTracer65]

u say ur going to upgrade to win xp, id recommend doing this as ur 1st move. as windows 98 normally uses a fat32 file system, and xp uses ntfs,(thats putting it simply) which is a far more stable system, i use that particular western dig drive myself and ull have no trouble installing it under xp, as a side note follow the instructions with the drive regards the jumper on the drive depending on where u choose to install it.

[Cobra]

69mako,

Since your new hard drive is a faster one (8MB cache), why don't you make it the primary drive and your older one a slave? Once you've installed the drives, install your OS onto the newer drive. You will gain an increase in speed, but it is a bit more work.

Also, beware that WD drives must be set to "CABLE SELECT" when they are the only drive in the machine. I'm not sure about when they are coupled with other drives. So, your hard drives would be:

- Primary master: new WD drive
- Primary slave: old 40GB Maxtor drive

You most likely know this, but please do be careful when installing your new hard drive. The electronics on the underside are static sensitive, and the drives are fragile. I speak from bitter experience...

Hope this helps, and good luck!

CobraDMX

[Jester700]

Making the new drive primary will speed everything up a little, that's true. But you'll have your OS, swapfile, and storage space all on one drive, and if you partition it, different areas of the same drive. This will sometimes cause more head seeking and slow the whole thing down when this happens. For DVD work and "normal apps" this is not a biggie, but if you ever go to digital video capturing & editing, I would change the setup back.

[lechtin]

Keep the 40GB drive as your primary master. That way, you can keep your applications and OS on one drive and the data and multimedia files on the larger drive (I always have more need for space with data than with applications).

Install winxp first, then the drive on secondary master. It is true that putting a fast hard drive on the same IDE channel as a CD/DVD drive will slow everything down to the CD/DVD speed (used to be anyway, but I would not take a chance). Depending on the size of your case, try not to sandwich your 2 hard drives together (keep at least one expansion bay of space between the 2) to improve cooling. Unless you have a specific need for separate partitions, just format as one large partition as NTFS (hence the installation of winxp first) You cannot format such a large drive with FAT32, and the NTFS will avoid the 4GB maximum file size limitation of FAT32 (if you do any DV capture, 1 hour is 13GB).

Using the faster drive for the OS may be faster, but if you can stand to boot a few seconds slower, it's not worth the hassle.

[hlse]

Quite correct. Placing a HD on the same channel as a CD-ROM will slow it down. A new HD is probably ATA133 or ATA100 where a CD-ROM is ATA33 or ATA66.

Never install a HD one the same channel !
If neccesary buy a new IDE-interafce card and put it in an emty slot.
This way you get IDE3 and IDE4 to install new drives when needed.

IDE1 Master: HD
Slave : HD or empty

IDE2 Master : CD or DVD
Slave : CD or DVD

IDE3 and 4 : additional HD.

[lacywest]

About 2 years ago ... I bought a Maxtor ATA 133 80 Gig. It came with a Ultra ATA 133 Controller Card w/ 4 IDE Channels.

The 80 gig ... started developing bad clusters a year later ... I took it out.

I now have 5 Maxtor 60 GB HDs ... Maxtor 40 GB for C-Drive Windows System.

And my MOBO MSI KTAV-L ... supports ATA 133 drives.

Here is a link for a Ultra ATA 133 Controller Card ... just for reference.

http://www.electroseller.com/store.mvc?p=IDE_ATA133

-------------------------------------------
Maxtor Retail PCI Ultra ATA/133 Controll "DISC"

Maxtor EIDE ATA/133 PCI Controller Card.

Satisfy your system's need for speed by adding four ports with data transfer rates up to 133 MB/sec. Working with your existing motherboard, this PCI card enables you to connect up to four additional IDE devices to your system including hard drives, CD-ROMs, tape back-ups, and most other UDMA 133/100/66/33 or ATAPI devices. The "auto-identity" feature provides instant recognition for fast and hassle-free set-up. Advanced CRC error correction improves high-speed data transfers, and dual independent channel PCI IDE bus master controllers offer years of reliable data throughput. To install, simply plug your card into an empty PCI slot and follow the steps in the user-friendly installation guide.

Features:

- Up to 133 MB/sec data transfer rate.

- Works with most ATA UDMA 133/100/66/33 devices.

- Supports drives larger than 137GB.

- Add four additional ports.

Specifications:.

System Requirements:
Available PCI 2.1 expansion slot
Pentium II class or higher PC
Windows 98,
Windows Millennium,
Windows NT 4.x SP4 or higher, Windows 2000,
or Windows XP
Included in the kit:

Ultra ATA/133 PCI Adapter Card
Ultra ATA/133 interface cable
Installation guide
Installation software
1-Year warranty

Link >>> http://shop.harddrive.com/cgi-bin/itemdy15.pl?keyword=CPI+MAX+K01PCAT133&UID=2003041102152137

I took the 4 Maxtor ATA 133 60 GB ... laid them on their side ... and cut strips of tin from a AOL Mailer cd tin case and attached all 4 together with at least a 1/4 in gap between them all ... shaped like a brick.

This brick of 60 GB HDs also have a fan next to them for added cooling.

Picture [something messed up picture not being displayed] included shows the harddrives sitting on bottom of tower to the right. The fan is attached to the front of section of the tower ... can't see it.

Maybe this will work ... browse down to bottom of page ...

lacywest ... Posted: Dec 31, 2003 22:33

https://www.videohelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=756738

CPU Temp ... 107 Degrees and Chassis ... 100 Degrees

[Nolonemo]

69mako,
Also, beware that WD drives must be set to "CABLE SELECT" when they are the only drive in the machine. I'm not sure about when they are coupled with other drives. So, your hard drives would be:
CobraDMX

This information is FALSE. I have run both single and mult WD drive systems and have never used Cable Select jumper settings, always set the drives as master or slave. I build my own boxes so I know whereof I speak. Don't know of any reason you couldn't use cable select, though.

[bottle-necked]

I would set this new drive as primary/slave and use is for capture and dvd file storage etc. Leave you OS on that 40g.

This will give you the best performance for capture.

By the way, that WD 120JB is a great drive. You'll love it.

Good luck.

[Delerious]

This information is FALSE. I have run both single and mult WD drive systems and have never used Cable Select jumper settings, always set the drives as master or slave. I build my own boxes so I know whereof I speak. Don't know of any reason you couldn't use cable select, though.

I'm running dual WD1200JB's in cable select here. Both the system and ribbon cable have to support it.

Jerry

[69mako]

Thanks to all that replied. I decided to run my 40 gig and the pioneer DVD on the primary IDE (master/Slave replectively). I installed the 120 gig and the SONY DVD-writer on the secondary IDE (Master/Slave respectively). So far so good. I installed WIN XP before I did any of this. Everything is going good so far. i spent the better part of the weekend updating drivers, etc. If I am pleased with the new drive, I plan on buying another one.

Thanks again for everyone who replied. My next project is a IDE card and a USB card. Any suggestions as for what to look for?

Thanks in advance,
Mike

[Cobra]

Nolonemo,

I build PCs as a part time business. I use WD hard drives (quiet and reliable), and none will work in a single HDD configuration unless they are set to Cable Select. I should add that you may use either cable select or you must set the jumper to "Single". If you have one drive in your machine, and it is a WD drive, setting it to master or slave will probably not work. This is because on WD drives, the master and slave jumpers set the drive to dual mode. I don't know why this causes it not to work, but that's what happens.

I refer you to Western Digital's own installation guide:

http://wdc.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/wdc.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_sid=xPyMJb1h&p_lva=&...YWdlPTE*&p_li=
(Look to Section 2 - Jumper Settings)

Please do not condemn information given as false, even if you speak from experience. A "Why not?" question would be a little more polite!

Obviously this installation guide does not stand true for some drives, since you have managed to get a singe drive to work using master/slave jumpers. However, in my experience, if the drive is set to master or slave, and is the only drive in the machine, it will simply refuse to work.

I have used the Western Digital Caviar SE 80GB. What drive did you have, out of interest?

Anyway, just trying to help others to avoid my mistake.

Regards,

CobraDMX

[bbulldog]

Hi

try not to put two optical drives on the same cable as lots of burning programs dont like that if you copy one to one

[gmatov]

Cobra,

I just checked a WD drive, Single, OFF, Master, jumper pair 3, Slave, jumper pair 4.

Maxtor, Master ON, Slave, OFF.

Not arguing. just what I just looked at.

2 opticals on 1 cable is the same as 2 HDDs on 1 cable. The interrupts cause one to stop while the other reads or writes, taking turns, so, NO, it is not a good idea to put a writer and a reader on the same cable.

But, if you rip with a DVD-ROM, to the HDD on the other channel, render, then burn to a DVD writer, on the first channel, no problem. Most people do not do disk to disk copy with DVDs, or even CDs.

Cheers,

George

[jimmalenko]

Its time for my 2c.

I would keep the 40GB drive as Primary Master. Install XP. Install 120GB as Primary Slave. Partition if you wish. I believe it is better (and have had great success with) keeping both hard drives on the one channel and both optical drives on the one channel. On the fly CDs work a treat and you have the added bonus of transfer between the HDs is quicker than of they were separated. Put the OS on the old drive - that way you have a full 120GB to play with, and if you are doing captures, you are gonna need it !
There is not much benefit in putting the OS on the new HD because you will be defragging every week to get reasonable performance.

I use mine for capture and I capture to the large HD and then output the final MPEG to my smaller drive before burning. I copy CDRs on the fly and rip all DVDs to my HD for processing with DVDShrink and/or burning straight to disc.

@cobra:
I work full-time as an IT support person and you must be getting dodgy drives to have to install as CS. With all Hard Drives, Master is the preferred setting. I install mainly Seagate and Maxtor and have never had a problem with them. I guess auto-detection is a big thing these days though.

[gmatov]

Jim,

Try installing two drives set as Master or Slave on the same cable. Lockup. Autodetect or no. Electrically they know what is what. Two drives trying to access the same wire in the cable, sumpin's wrong.

Read the Feb 2004 issue of PC Worlod. There is an article where they got some drives badly fragged, don't ask me how, ran benchmarks and found that, except for some particular apps, there was no hit in performance. Heresy, I know, here, but there you have it.

I have never run a benchmark on my drives, before and after, but will have to try it. Kinda piss you off to think of all the hours you have sat and watched all those little blocks turn blue if it was unnecessary, wouldn't it.

Cheers,

George

[duhmez]

Primary slave. The end.

[jimmalenko]

Try installing two drives set as Master or Slave on the same cable. Lockup. Autodetect or no. Electrically they know what is what. Two drives trying to access the same wire in the cable, sumpin's wrong.

I'm sorry George, I don't understand what you are trying to say. I have built 5 machines with both HDs on the same IDE channel without a problem. My specialty is dual booting 98SE and XP. I normally use a 40GB with 2 partitions as master and then a 2nd HD (normally 80Gb or bigger) as slave. Both have the "true" jumper settings ie. the booting drive is set as master, the data drive set as slave. I haven't had any problems with any of the machines. My own has run for almost three years with this config.

From what I can gather you are saying that you can't put two HDs on the same IDE channel ?

[bottle-necked]

The first computer I built was a in Jan 1996. It was a $1,000 Intel 486 SX-33 with 4MB memory and a 512MB HDD and MS-DOS V6.22. Over the years I have built many new systems from scratch. I've had the top off of dozens of systems making repairs. So here is some 'old school' advice from an old timer.

Put your old 40G as master, the new 120G as slave on IDE0. Put your CD and DVD whatever drives on the secondary IDE1 as master/slave. I have read a lot of motherboard manuals and I have never seen any instructions advising any other arrangements with the drives like you are planning on installing. The main reason for this is the fact that if you put a UDMA 66/100/133 device on the same channel and cable as a UDMA 33/PIO device the UDMA 66/100/133 device will select UDMA 33 and no faster. That's just the way it is and has always been. It might change someday, but not today.

The only option to this rule is an IDE controller that allows such drive combinations. There are a few, but I doubt if you have one.

Put the drives as stated above and you will have an 'old school' installation. Good luck.

[Nelson37]

OK, here's the deal.

Any time you mix two non-identical drives, even drives of the same performance level, you risk a performance-damaging incompatibility. This can be severe, but is usually barely noticeable. Mixing a CD or DVD drive and a hard drive is virtually guaranteed to lose performance. This is not theoretical, I have seen it happen, and in some situations the deterioration is extremely obvious, and easily remedied by removing the second drive.

With only two IDE channels, your best bet is both hard drives on primary, both opticals on secondary. If both channels are ATA-133 then primary and secondary can be reversed, if the BIOS allows booting from secondary channel. Some Mobos have hi-speed only on primary channel.

I have never seen a drive that MUST be on cable select, (unless you go back to the MFM/RLL days, when there was no such setting but that is effectively what it was). Some drives Master and Standalone are the same setting, if not they require the 2nd, corresponding drive when set to Master or Slave. Some drives have a seperate setting for Standalone or Single, but I have never seen one that did not have such an option. Cable Select requires a Cable Select cable. A Master requires a Slave, a Slave requires a Master, Standalones (or Singles) do not. Anyone without a firm grasp of these concepts really should not be assembling PC's.

If you intend to capture, then cap drive should be on seperate IDE channel with no other drives on same cable. If not, best performance would be fastest drive as OS drive. DO NOT UPGRADE, install the new OS as a clean install. Yes, this will require re-installing all your apps and drivers, but this is actually a good thing as you will leave out stuff you don't use, and get the latest, correct drivers for your hardware.

I fix PC's for a living, for over 15 years. Have assembled hundreds and popped the lids on over a thousand. Benchmark tests are useful tools, but you must remember that most people do not use their PC's to run benchmarks, and these tests often have severe flaws or unrealistic assumptions about user operations.

[gmatov]

Jimalenko,

The operative word was OR, 2 drives as Master, OR 2 drives as Slave, on the same cable. "Master HDD failed", "Slave HDD failed".

You MUST select the setting, OR you MUST select CS, Cable Select. Using CS, the position on the ribbon cable determines which is which.

Nelson,

The WD I just looked at, again, Single is no jumper, Master is pair 3, Slave is pair 4, CS is pair 5.

Mixing 2 brands will not cause a hit to performance.

Benchmarks suck, as they are set to hi-light esoteric perfomance parameters you will never have to deal with.

No drive, today, is any better than any other, with the possible exception of Seagate, which, if you look at the box, is generally an ATA 100 drive. Everybody else makes ATA 133, 2 or 8 meg cache, which tou should not pay the slightest attention to. You have a, for Christ's sake, 3 gigahertz Pentium, and you think it needs all that cache because it can't process the data as fast as the drive can deliver it, or vice versa? Come on!!!!

We are using these things to deliver data to an 8X DVD burner, max burn, 10.8 MBPS. The HDDs can hit 50 MBPS burst, 35 to 45 sustained.

Can you say "Overkill"? Yet people blame the drives for dropped frames when capturing, the drive can't keep up, and AVI or MPEG caps are well below the drives write speed.

Cheers,

Geosge

[jimmalenko]

The operative word was OR, 2 drives as Master, OR 2 drives as Slave, on the same cable. "Master HDD failed", "Slave HDD failed".

You MUST select the setting, OR you MUST select CS, Cable Select. Using CS, the position on the ribbon cable determines which is which.

You don't say I knew that, you just didn't express yourself very well.

[gmatov]

jim,

Sorry, thought I was clear in my first post, obviously wasn't, if you missed it, imagine a non-technical person reading it.

I use M and S, never Cable Select, I know when I put a new drive as Slave to the primary, it will come up as the 3rd on my Explorer screen, Pri Master, Sec master, Pri Slave, Sec Slave, Extended Pri partitions, etc, etc.

I go to R:\ on this machine, S and T and U are the opticals, with 2 addon ATA cards, one 133, for HDDs, one ATA 66, which sees Opticals. My 811 is on the 66 card. My 133 card won't see an optical device,tho' I have a whole port available. Don't know if I can cram 2 more HDDs into the case.. Getting crowded.

Cheers,

George

Edit,

Bottleneck,

That is so much bullshit. Having an ATA 33 and an ATA 133 on the same bus or same IDE cable, or an optical device, does NOT cut the speed of the 133 device to the lowest common denominator. Sorry, old school or no, it does NOT!!

[69mako]

Thanks again to everyone that has replied. I've received many different opinions and I appreaite all of them.

Nelson37 brought up something that I forgot to mention in my previous post. I do plan on doing some video capturing with my computer. I have an ATI AIW 7500 video card and I want to capture some HI8 and VHS home movies. What kind of monkey wrench does that put into the mix? I am not against buying additional hardware (I.E. IDE card) to make my system run better. This is how I re-configured it.

Primary
M: 40 GIG Maxtor 2MB
S: 120 GIG WD 8 MB
Secondary
M: Pioneer DVD-ROM
S: Sony DVD-Writer

With this work for BOTH DVD\CD copying AND video capturing?

Thanks,
Mike

[gmatov]

Leave it like it is. Your ROM is going to rip to your Slave drive, the data will be worked on, the slave will transfer back to your DVD Burner, no crossovers.

Your ATI question, and capture, go to lordsmurf.com, check out his guides for ATI cards and capping with them.

Cheers,

George

[bottle-necked]

With OLD controllers, two drives ran at the speed of the slowest, but modern controllers tend to support split speed working. Controllers that provide independent device timing were not available 'in the old days' so the old school way is as I stated above. A lot of things has changed over the years and most are for the better, but I still don't mix and match IDE devices on the same channel. Call it whatever you want.