5400 and 7200rpm

[BigBadBob]

i just ordered a 40gb Maxtor D740X 7200rpm hard drive and have a question. I would like to use my existing 54oorpm drive for backup of documents and pictures, things like that. will using the both on the same ide channel slow the 7200rpm drive to 54oo rpm, or will it work just as if it were the only one? i will be doing video recording and editing. i cant put one on the other channel because i have a DVD-Rom, and a CD-RW drive using both connectors. any ideas?

Bob

[spoonmerlin]

It doesn't exectly work that way the RPM is just how fast the magnetic platers inside the hard drive spin. Faster the RPM the quiker it can locate the spots were the file is so the quicker the access time. The ide channel really won't be affected by this at least not enough for you to notice your see the 7200 is faster to assess stuf but the 5400 will be the same as always.
If you want to make sure to get the most speed out of the drive though you should see if your ide channel supports ATA/ 100 and see if I or both of the drives does too then get a 80 pin ide cable to connect the drive to the motherboard. The only problem with this is that you can only (al least in my experience) use ide drives that support ATA/66 and above on an 80 pin cable. This allows for much faster transfers to and from the hard drive. You can get add on cards for older motherboards this also give the bonus of allowing you to add 4 more ide drives to your system.

Regular ide cables are 40 pins and the drives will work with either one but most dvd,CD-roms and CDRw will only work with 40 pin cables and won't be detected correctly by windows. At least this is what I found out useing a ata/66 card with windows 98. The card saw the drive but when I went to use it windows locks up.

[bigmicka]

80 pin cable? ide cables are 40 pin.

anyway. the d740x range from maxtor is ata133 compatible. so if you want to get good performance from your current machine. purchase a ata133 controller. plug it into your pci slot and use that to run your 40gb. this way you will get the best performance out of it.

mic

[Ronin2]

My understanding is that the 80 pin cable has every 2nd wire connected to ground to minimise crosstalk between the signal wires.

The motherboard connector of the cable is blue, likewise the IDE connectors on the motherboards supporting this standard are also blue.

You must match these connectors otherwise you won't benefit from the higher transfer speed.

Ronin2

[BigBadBob]

i have 80 wire IDE cable for my hard drive. cant see the mobo or hard drive connector but i can see the middle connector and it is grey. also the one on the harddrive has smaller and twice as many wires as the one that connects to m ydvd-rom and cd-rw drives.

[Ronin2]

It sounds like you have the 80 wire cable on your hard drive and the standard 40 wire cable for your DVD & CD-RW drives.

I've got a 80 wire cable sitting in front of me at the moment, the M/Board connector is blue, the centre connector is grey and the end connector is black. I remember reading somewhere before that the master drive must be plugged in to the end connector.

If everything is setup properly on startup you should get a message on the screen concerning HDD S.M.A.R.T. capability. It will either say that it is enabled, disabled or enabled but the drives are not capable.

I hope I've helped.

Ronin2

[BigBadBob]

ok, master on black, slave on grey, and mobo on blue. Thank you very much