Slaving a drive

[Flatlined]

goofy question..

If I slave a dvd burner with my hard drive, will it cause any problems, lags, etc.??

Thanks for the help..

[redwudz]

Probably a lot of opinions here, but I'm not aware of it causing any real problems with a modern computer. I would still prefer the optical drives on their own channel, but sometimes you can't do that.

[aguillon]

Data transfer rates for DVD drives are much slower than for hard disks.

If they are put on the same channel, accessing the DVD drive will bump the transfer speeds down to the slowest speed, i.e. to that of the DVD burner. Your hard disk access speeds will therefore become extremely slow.

This is why everyone always advises putting DVD drives and hard disks on separate EIDE channels.

Cheers

[Flatlined]

cool.. Thanks for the insight.. I was unsure about that anyway..

[HillJack]

Data transfer rates for DVD drives are much slower than for hard disks.

Correct.

If they are put on the same channel, accessing the DVD drive will bump the transfer speeds down to the slowest speed, i.e. to that of the DVD burner. Your hard disk access speeds will therefore become extremely slow.

Why do people continue to believe this? In the old days when optical drives were rare and before DMA, yeah, it made a difference. Nowadays, it makes zero difference - with your logic, putting a UDMA33 hard drive on the same channel with a UDMA100 hard drive, the faster will slow down - this is simply not true.

I have an nForce2 chipset mobo. nVidia drivers let me do a speed test and I have 2 identical Seagate 200GB drives: one is primary slave, the other is secondary master, with which there is an LG DVD-ROM as secondary slave. Both drives have their transfer modes automatically set in the BIOS to UDMA Mode 5 Ultra100. The transfers of both 200GB drives are identical, including the secondary master, with the DVD-ROM slave whose transfer mode is UDMA 3 Ultra33.

Why is there no difference? Because it doesn't make a difference on modern dma-capable hardware. Even with a standard 40pin IDE cable versus an 80pin cable -- as long as DMA is used, there will be no difference (nothing as drastic as you claim atleast).

This is why everyone always advises putting DVD drives and hard disks on separate EIDE channels.

Then everyone should be ignored because they clearly don't know what they're talking about. If your mobo can do DMA, you have NOTHING to worry about, regardless of where your optical drives are.

[redwudz]

Modern computers (As in the last 5+ years) don't have a problem with ATA 33 and ATA 100/133 devices on the same channel. Where the problem might be is in transferring. Not for speed but for wait times on the same channel. Each device has to share controller time and only one at a time can transfer and the other has to wait it's turn.

If you were writing to your DVD burner from a HD drive on the same channel, there could be some lag, but the channel would not slow to the speed of the slower device. With DVD burners or ROMs being much slower than hard drives, I doubt you would notice much difference in transfer time as the controller is faster than the drives anyway.

Two hard drives on the same channel communicating with each other at ATA 133 speeds could be a bigger problem. Even that is unlikely as most communication between drives is mostly in one direction, with only acknowledgments of transferred data being sent back to the originating drive.

This is undoubtedly open to argument, but try the different combinations and see if you notice a difference. You can use a program such as SiSandra to test transfer rates. Or find a reliable source on the internet that has a different take.

[ROF]

Modern computers (As in the last 5+ years) don't have a problem with ATA 33 and ATA 100/133 devices on the same channel. Where the problem might be is in transferring. Not for speed but for wait times on the same channel. Each device has to share controller time and only one at a time can transfer and the other has to wait it's turn.

This problem can still exist, if you are using PCI IDE Bus Cards. The slowest drive determines transfer speed for all drives on the card. this may not be true for all IDE Cards, but I have Promise Ultra TX2 133(I think that's what it's called) and I know that's how it works. On boot up, watch the bios report when it detects the drives on the card. Speed and DMA status for the bus is the last piece of info reported.

[smearbrick1]

There should be a thread on busted computer myths such as this. Start with this myth and follow it with the optical drive on an PCI ultra ata card myth... yes, you can put an optical drive on an ATA card.

[winifreid]

Myth. But perhaps just confussion about the meaning of is. If you write from a fast HD to slow DVD on the same channel, the tranfer will occur at the speed of the slowest drive (DVD). But if you have a fast HD and a slow DVD on the same channel and a fast HD on another channel and you tranfer data from one HD to the other, the transfer will occur at the speed of the slowest HD regardless of speed or location of the DVD.