most effective setup of harddrive(s) and cd drive(s)?

[jaybird]

I just "upgraded" my motherboard.

However, my new mobo has only 2 IDE plugs where as my old mobo had 4! (it could support up to 8 IDE devices)

I had a hard drive on each of the 2 ATA66/100 plugs (1 for OS's and 1 for video )and a CD-ROM reader plus a DVD-ROM player on another plug and a CD burner plus a DVD-ROM/RAM burner on the other for a total of 6 IDE type devices.

I tried a SIIG multi-purpose PCI card (ATA66/100, RAID, USB, Firewire)to try to retain all devices but since I added this card I can't capture above 352 x 240 (with the "old" mobo 720 x 480 was possible but I saw very high CPU usage - it had dual Celerons)

I am wondering if there is to much traffic on the PCI bus (all 5 slots are full, Chaintech AV-710 sound card, Videomate TV/FM/PVR capture card, Linksys 10/100 NIC/Adaptec SCSII card for scanner and the SIIG multi-purpose card and a FX-5500 dual head AGP video card.

So I'm thinking, do away with the 2 readers and keep just the 2 "burners".

If I do this, should I:

Put the 2 hard drives on different chanels and slave a 'burner off of each, or should I have both hard drives on the same chanel and both 'burners on the same chanel?

OBTW, another problem, at times none of my CD devices will read a disc after it is inserted or at times different drives will "loose" files that I am trying to load onto the hard drive (like when I'm trying to load a new program onto the hard drive).

This is a Gigabyte dual PIII mobo with a Gig of PC133 RAM that requires me to load the VIA 4 in 1 driver set from the Arena website and then I must load the SIIG drivers to allow the system to "see" the card (to much going on on the bus?)

A lot of "food for thought" but I would like some advice please!

Regards,

jaybird

[budz]

put your hard drives on the SIIG controller card then it would free up your IDE controllers on the mobo. you can then use the IDE controllers for the dvd burners and dvdrom, and cdrw.

[jaybird]

I thought about that but I can't get the PC to boot with the hard drives on the PCI card. I'm sure there's a way I just can't figure it out, its' as if my PC can't "see" the hard drives during the boot process.

Regards,

jaybird

PS: configuration is dual PIII 1100/100/256/1.75 Volts, 4 sticks PC133 256 meg RAM, 1- 18gig hdd for OS's(dual-boot 98SE/WIN2K Pro), 1- 60 gig hdd for video, FX5500 AGP vid card, Chaintech AV-710 audio card, SIIG multi-purpose PCI card, Adaptec SCSII for scanner, VideoMate TV/FM/PVR card for capture and a Linksys 10/100 Ethernet card.

[normcar]

I would keep the boot drive on the primary IDE controller because some MBs cannot boot from a IDE controller card. You can add more than 1 device per IDE connection, but you should understand the following.

1--All devices on a single IDE connection will run at the speed of the slowest device. Some older CD reader/writers and DVD readers and HDs only have slower speeds i.e. 33 or 66, while the newer HDs and newer DVD writers use 100/133, therfore the faster devices would run at the slower 33 or 66 speeds.

2--Keep devices which are used at the same time on different IDE connections. Devices on the same connection have to share the 100/133 available throughput.