Master & Servant (Slave)

[hubris]

Hey folks. Very useful forum.

My first question on this forum:

Are there any performance disadvantages to running master and slave HDDs on one IDE channel? Does the slave suffer? Can both drives bottleneck the channel?
More specifically, I'm thinking of partitioning my pagefile onto a separate backup HDD slaved to my data HDD. What do you think?

Oh yeah, they're both 7200 rpm drives.

Thanks.

hubris

[Cobra]

There is no problem running both hard drives on the same IDE channel, and will only cause a slight performance hit when copying drive-to-drive. I have never suffered a problem, and my transfer rates are always really fast.

I have never heard of pagefile partitioning before - give it a shot and tell us how you get on. Personally, from a hardware perspective, I can't see a problem with it.

Best of luck to you,

Cobra

[flaninacupboard]

i would put the pagefile drive on the other IDE channel, as it's likely data will be needed on both the system and pagefile drive at the same time. you can still put one optical drive on each channel, so DVD rip speed won't suffer.

[hubris]

I thought it was bad to put optical drives and HDDs on the same channel?

hubris

[flaninacupboard]

sort of :)

IDE 0 - Master, system hard drive (c:) - Slave, DVD-Rom drive (d:)

Copying from d: to c: won't get great performance with this setup, but it's very common and basically as simple as it gets.

IDE 0 - Master, system hard drive (c:) - Slave, nothing.

IDE 1 - Master, DVD-Rom (d:) - Slave, nothing

Copying from d: to c: is as fast as it gets, this is a good setup for a single optical system.

IDE 0 - Master, system hard drive (c:) - Slave, nothing

IDE 1 - Master, DVD-Rom (d:) - Slave, DVD-Writer (e:)

Now here copying from D: to c: or from e: to c: is still quick, but copying from d: to e: (for direct disc copies) is slow.

So

IDE 0 - Master, system hard drive (c:) - Slave, DVD-Writer (d:)

IDE 1 - Master, DVD-Rom (e:) - Slave, nothing.

This setup allows you to copy from e: to c: nice and quick and also allows writing from e: to d: quickly. writing from c: to d: suffers, but DVD write speed is limited by the media not IDE speeds. S o for you the best setup would seem to be

IDE 0 - Master, system hard drive (c:) - Slave, DVD-Writer (d:)

IDE 1 - Master, DVD-Rom (e:) - Slave, system page file (f:)


Hope that helps clear it up :)

[Saltydog]

OK, slight twist on the same topic. I just bought a 80G 7200rpm 8MB cache HD. I'm currently running a 20G 5400 2MB in the "C" spot. I'm new at this capture stuff, hence the new drive. I'm getting ready to take everything down for a rebuild. Am I better to make the 80G the C and have the OS and video cap/edit on it and just use the 20 for storage? Or put the software on the 20 and store the capture on the 80? OS is 98SE. (Yeah, I know... but I'm cheap.) Any idea/thoughts appreciated. SD

[gmatov]

IDE 0 - Master, system hard drive (c - Slave, DVD-Writer (d

IDE 1 - Master, DVD-Rom (e - Slave, system page file (f

Flan,

I don't know what OS you are using, but my 2k machine shows C, D, E, F, as primary partitions on my 4 HDDs, 2 on IDEs, 2 on ATA cards, next 3, G, H, I, are opticals, the rest, all the way to Y, are the partitions of each HDD in order, ie, J, K, L, may be the 3 partitions of the first drive, C. M, N, O, 3 partitions of the drive in the D spot, etc.

USB drives are at the end of the chain.

The original ? should be answered as Pri Master, OS, C, Pri Slave could be the DVD burner, if he is going to install and convert to the second HDD, after ripping to the C drive, with the DVD-ROM as the Sec Master ( or Slave, no difference ) and the convert to drive on the Secondary.

Rip from Optical Drive on 2 to Hard Drive on 1, Convert from Hard Drive on 1 to Hard Drive on 2, burn to optical on 1. No IRQs, taking turns talking on the same ribbon cable, maximum throughput. Put your page file or swap file wherever you want, just set a min and a max, click ignore when Win tells you that is a bad idea.. Set it to say twice the amount of ram you have, unless it's something like 64 megs, then make it 512 or a gig, but fixed.

Cheers,

George

edit;

SD, leave the little one as OS, if you have, say 10 gigs to rip to. Convert to the other drive, delete the rip, rip another, either fill up the 80 gig, or burn and delete, reburn from a disk.

98SE is not being cheap. I still run it, and, next to the 2000 machine it shares the desk with, both 2400 AMDs, it holds its own. No problems whatsoever.

[DVD_Ripper]

Saltydog Posted: May 27, 2004 22:03

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OK, slight twist on the same topic. I just bought a 80G 7200rpm 8MB cache HD. I'm currently running a 20G 5400 2MB in the "C" spot. I'm new at this capture stuff, hence the new drive. I'm getting ready to take everything down for a rebuild. Am I better to make the 80G the C and have the OS and video cap/edit on it and just use the 20 for storage? Or put the software on the 20 and store the capture on the 80? OS is 98SE. (Yeah, I know... but I'm cheap.) Any idea/thoughts appreciated. SD

Just as your note in your thread... Use your 80 as your boot and capture drive and keep your 20 for general backups.

BUT... partition your drive. At least 10 gigs for Boot (C:\) and remainder for video work.

[stiltman]

I would do just the opposite.

Primary IDE master = 20gb drive with 1 (10gb) partition as C: for OS, 1(10gb) partion as D: for programs

Primary IDE secondary= 80gb drive with 1 (80gb) partition as E: for storage

[DVD_Ripper]

Not sure if I'd want my OS running on a 5400 rpm drive that possibly may not even support DMA.... oh well personal preferences I guess..