ide setup confusion

[r@ys]

i have a 80Gb HD, DVD-rom and a DVD-RW

how should i set them up on my DIE channel???

some plp say HD+DVD-RW on ide1 and DVD-rom ide2 and some plp telling me , HD alone and DVD-RW\Rom on second ide.
its getting really confusion

oh also the HD is backup only since i run my OS on a RAID0 setup

TIA

[holistic]

OS on a raid0 ....you are either brave OR .............

If the 80Giga is occasional storage/backup then (if it was my 'puter) DVDburner master 1, HD master 2, DVDrom slave 2.

Do whatever works for you. The DVDrom could be slaved on 1 but personally i would just leave it as above.
IDE1 / 2 make no difference it just affects boot order. This of course can be changed in BIOS.
Others may have differing ideas.
my 2¢

][

[69mako]

On my computer I have the HD's on the primary IDE and the DVD Drives on the Secondary IDE. Works good for me.

Mako

[Capmaster]

I think it's better to keep the optical drives and the hard drives on separate channels because the opticals can slow down whatever is on the same channel.

[Jayhawk]

because the opticals can slow down whatever is on the same channel.

Not really true anymore. That all changed in the mid-90's when the enhanced IDE interface became a standard. Once the chipset, bios, and operating system identify that maximum transfer capabilities of a device, the device will be feed data at that transfer rate (irrespective of the other device on that channel). The only exception occurs when the motherboard chipset or bios has a lower transfer capability than the device in which case the transfer will be at the maximum speed of the motherboard. Still, you could have an ATA100 hard drive running at ATA66 on an ATA66 motherboard, and still have a CD-ROM running at PIO-4. The PIO-4 device does not cause the hard drive to run at PIO-4. The transfer rate is limited only by the individual device, and the motherboard/bios.

[r@ys]

i dont really do on the fly copy , i use DVDshrink so i rip with my DVDrom to the HD and from the HD (RAID HD) to the DVD-RW.

[gmatov]

HDD Primary Master, both Opticals, in your case on the Secondary. Rip to HDD, convert, or whatever on HDD, burn to Secondary.
RAID? WHY?

[r@ys]

RAID stipe , faster

[holistic]

RAID stipe , faster

Am sure George knows that, as do I.

Raid0 with an OS is just odd thats all . Loose 1 drive you loose everything.

][

[r@ys]

nah i have a 120Gb Back with my image on it.

i lost 15gb og mp3 once and i had my lesson

[Cobra]

In answer to the question, some people say that you should run both optical drives on separate channels in order to allow on-the-fly copies to be really successful, but I have had no problems whatsoever running both my hard drives on the primary channel and both opticals on the secondary.

Just ensure that your reader is slave and connected to the grey (middle) plug on the IDE cable, and the writer is master and on the end plug. I'm not sure if the plug positions make a difference but better safe than sorry.

It's easier to run the IDE cables like this anyway - see how there's little length between plugs on the cables? That would suggest you're meant to run it to one pair of drives!

Here's how I have set up my PC - and I have no problems burning on-the-fly:



Cobra

EDIT - RAID 0 - Yes, faster but prone to failure. Use only if you're sure. Also, if you have no hardware RAID controller, expect a drop in system performance as your PC emulates RAID.

[VCDHunter]

Very neat inside mate, I have cables bloody everywhere in mine

[Cobra]

Thanks! Actually, I'm going to tidy it up a bit more when next weekend when I visit home. I want it to look dead neat in there!

It's important for airflow, that picture was taken for my overclocking site to demonstrate how a little spiroflex can do a lot to improve your case cooling.

Cobra

[gmatov]

OK, RAID is a little faster.

But...why do you need faster?

What are you doing that requires more throughput than ATA 133?

Video at 8000kbps is only 1 megabyte per second, and you would have approx. 30 megabytes sustained and up to maybe 50 burst.

It's not only overkill, but as mentioned, 1 drive goes, both drives data goes.

I'd personally go with the 3 drives as seperates, 380 Gigs. Hell, I have 4 internals, 3 opticals, and 2 external USB drives on my main machine, 600 Gig in all, only bad thing is all the way to "Y" for drive letters, "Z" with my Cruzer plugged in or the second card reader. I do get confused at times.

Cheers,

George

[stiltman]

That's why you name your drives

OS drive
Storage
Videos
RAID Storage

I hope you don't go with the default "local disk" 8)

[andyp1]

I'm more confused that someone can be lost with IDE channels yet has a RAID setup. I have a RAID card put in purely as extra IDE channels , The instructions reguarding RAID I think would take a lot of understanding.

George - What will you do after Y and Z or is that it? Or is Stilmans post the answer to that ?

[stiltman]

I'm more confused that someone can be lost with IDE channels yet has a RAID setup. I have a RAID card put in purely as extra IDE channels , The instructions reguarding RAID I think would take a lot of understanding.

George - What will you do after Y and Z or is that it? Or is Stilmans post the answer to that ?

No you still have to have a drive letter.

I can guarantee he does not have 25 drives installed in one computer

[andyp1]

It would seem an awful lot , I just checked mine and I have 11 up to L , and seeing as USB are supposedly capable of something ridiculous like (I'm not quite sure ) 127 devices something like that , that if you had an abundance of things which register as removable drives and receive a drive letter when conected , what would happen after the alphabet ran out.

[stiltman]

you start mounting them as folders

[andyp1]

Thanks Stiltman

Learning a little bit more each day

Cheers

[stiltman]

I was wrong.....will find an answer as I've seen it before somewhere

edit

http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/WindowsServ/2003/all/techref/en-us/De..._basic_how.asp

[gmatov]

No, actually, Z is followed, logically, as AA, BB, CC, etc. Always has been that way.

And I did say I have 4 internals, and 3 internal opticals, have room on the ATA card for 1 more device.

One internal and the USBs are intact, unpartitioned, 120 internal, 120 and 20 external. The others are partitioned from 137 on a 160, down to the one drive that has 5 gig partitions, 6 of them in addition to the larger ones on it. Purpose is to have seperate parts. for various flavors of Linux.

3 of the internals still have Win installed to the first part, as they were, at one time, OS ( C ) drive. Buy a newer, bigger, make C, reinstall OS. Most, if not all, programs installed when those were C can still be run when booted ro Win2k on the E drive, or 98SE on the C.

I don't like making a large OS part, 5 or 6 gigs, install programs to another part, have to wipe C, no problem, but programs do need re-installed if they were on the C.

Oh, BTW, no B drive, as that is reserved in BIOS for second floppy, so I actually do have 24 drives or Logical Drives. And, most of them are named in some fashion, video, storage, Win98, Win2k, etc. Confusion comes in when you realize Windows calls Primary parts on my 4 drives C,D,E,F, any logical parts on C are G, H, I, logicals on D are J, K, L, and so on. AND, Win2k interposes the Opticals after the Primaries ( G, H, I ), but 98 makes them the last drives after all the Logicals.

Now can you see why I mention confusion? It confuses Norton Win Doctor on shortcuts, too, as, " a removeable drive has been installed or removed", because drive H may be drive M in the other OS, so shortcuts are inconsistent. Have to tell it not to repair them.

If you are still confused, welcome to the club.

Cheers,

George

[andyp1]

Hey thanks guys , that's interesting stuff .

And I did say I have 4 internals, and 3 internal opticals, have room on the ATA card for 1 more

That is exactly what I have in terms of numbers of physical drives plus floppy plus internal 3 slot memory card reader which accounts for 11 drives.
No actual partitiions on HDs though.
Another thing to learn another day.

Blimey though , I put my keys down and chase around for ages , imagine saving a file and forgeting just where you saved it. You must be very organised .

[gmatov]

Organized? Hell, no.

I once lost over 3 gigs of my pictures, digitals, scans, all my family pics.

No idea in hell how I could have.

Went to fix my granddaughter's computer, looked at her drives, there are my pictures!!!

Took a 40 gig out of one of my machines, upgraded hers, was the one with my pics. Had to take my USB drive over to get my pics back.

And I'll bet you find those keys in the very last place you look, don't you?

And, no, my stuff is so messed up, duplicated, etc, that I have 300 gigs on the drives, 255 free. Take a little time on occassion to move stuff around, consolidate a little, get rid of old, old program DLs, etc, trialware that has expired, stuff I didn't like, stuff that crashed or conflicted somehow. Still a lot of cleaning to do, though.

Cheers,

George

[gmatov]

Stiltman,

Is your avatar recent take of the new boy? Born nearly same time as Will's little girl, no? Chubby little bugger. (Hope that's not an offensive word in this context, in England, it's not here. )

The new machine in the other room has 5 empty PCI slots. Feasible I could put 5 ATA cards in it, 20 drives, 4 on the IDEs, 2 floppies, total 26 with no extra partitioning. A new 8X AGP video card would free up room for 4 more drives.

No guarantee that I can't have 25 drives, tho', here, I don't.

Cheers,

George

[stiltman]

Stiltman,

Is your avatar recent take of the new boy? Born nearly same time as Will's little girl, no? Chubby little bugger. (Hope that's not an offensive word in this context, in England, it's not here. )

The new machine in the other room has 5 empty PCI slots. Feasible I could put 5 ATA cards in it, 20 drives, 4 on the IDEs, 2 floppies, total 26 with no extra partitioning. A new 8X AGP video card would free up room for 4 more drives.

No guarantee that I can't have 25 drives, tho', here, I don't.

Cheers,

George

Yep,my son born feb 29th same day as me
He was 9lbs at birth, now he's 15+

Yes, theoretically, you can have that many drives, then add another 4-6 partitions to each. However, how would you power them and run the IDE cables to them? SCSI would be much easier solution, and more expensive

[Capmaster]

Yep,my son born feb 29th same day as me
He was 9lbs at birth, now he's 15+

So how is the little nipper? In the one close-up avatar pic it looks like he's practicing his VCDHELP "Shut the **** up" look

[Shocker Milwaukee]

Hey Cobra, what prog do you use to burn on the fly? I had success with NERO 5.**** (burning DVD R on the fly) with 2 opticals on one IDE channel & two hard drives on the other, but after the first "totally successful burn" (no buffer underruns & playable disc), I've experienced buffer underruns (SMART tech. kicked in & worked - playable discs) with subsequent burns. I was thinking about putting DVD ROM on the other channel, but my IDE cables aren't long enough... Any suggestions?