Does Master/Slave/CS affect my Drive Performance?

[Sikander]

Hi, just wanted to ask if putting a drive on Master, slave or cable select affects its performance in any way? I mean, would a Master drive perform better than a slave drive (Do I sound Dumb??!!).................
Also, Is it okay if I put my Hard Disk on a Slave and My DVD Burner on the Master of my Primary IDE Channel? Currently My hard disk is on the Master primary channel and theres nothing on the slave!
Thanks. [/b]

[budz]

Hi, just wanted to ask if putting a drive on Master, slave or cable select affects its performance in any way? I mean, would a Master drive perform better than a slave drive (Do I sound Dumb??!!).................
Also, Is it okay if I put my Hard Disk on a Slave and My DVD Burner on the Master of my Primary IDE Channel? Currently My hard disk is on the Master primary channel and theres nothing on the slave!
Thanks. [/b]

Your hard drive would need to be set to MASTER on PRIMARY CHANNEL.
It would be better to put your DVD BURNER on SECONDARY CHANNEL on MASTER or SLAVE.

[Sikander]

yeah but let me tell u the configuration i have currently.

Primary IDE Channel....
Master..............Hard Disk
Slave...........NOthing


Secondary IDE Channel.....
Master............Samsung DVD Rom
Slave..............Lite On CD Writer

What do u suggest now?
And u still didn't answer my question

[budz]

yeah but let me tell u the configuration i have currently.

Primary IDE Channel....
Master..............Hard Disk
Slave...........NOthing


Secondary IDE Channel.....
Master............Samsung DVD Rom
Slave..............Lite On CD Writer

What do u suggest now?
And u still didn't answer my question

Ummm....you failed to mention you had a LITEON CDRW in your original post......I would suggest you remove the LITEON CDRW since the DVD BURNER can burn CDR's.....then put your DVD BURNER on SECONDARY IDE CHANNEL set to MASTER and put your SAMSUNG DVDROM as SECONDARY SLAVE.....that's if you do not want to keep the LITEON CDRW connected.

If you wanna keep both of those drives then put the SAMSUNG DVDROM on PRIMARY IDE set to SLAVE.....then put your DVD BURNER on SECONDARY MASTER and leave the LITEON CDRW on as SECONDARY SLAVE.......

[Sikander]

Thanks Budz........you are quickly becoming my Tech Guru. Now if only you could tell me WHY you chose the configuration you just gave me. Just so that I know why these drives need this master and slave thing??!

[Tidy]

Master or slave makes no idfference as long as it is not on the same channel as the source drive no matter what type of source it is.

DOn't get too hasty removing the CDRW. It will NOT make any speed difference and you don't want to burn CD's with your DVD burner.

Think of it this way. You have a finite # of discs that your DVD burner will burn (it will break eventually). Why make those discs CD's when they can be 100% DVD. Use the CDRW to burn CD's and the DVDrw to burn DVD's


Use the last configuration with all the drives that was listed above.

[Richard_G]

Think of it this way. You have a finite # of discs that your DVD burner will burn (it will break eventually). Why make those discs CD's when they can be 100% DVD. Use the CDRW to burn CD's and the DVDrw to burn DVD's

So when the burner does die, the DVD laser will be worn out but the CD laser will never have been used......

Use it for both and wear both lasers out equally.

[Bodysurf]

you don't want to burn CD's with your DVD burner.

This is NOT as big of a deal as it was years ago when DVD-burners were 4+X the cost ($300+) of a CD-burner ($60+). Now, the price difference between a CD-burner and a DVD-burner is virtually NIL.

In fact, for 99% of the people out there, buying a CD-ROM, CD-burner or DVD-ROM drive is just plain silly.

But, as far as the original topic, for best performance, it is always best to put each drive on their own controller -- i.e., everything is a MASTER with no SLAVES used at all.

[Sikander]

U say that best performance I can get if everything is a master with no slave used at all. I have 2 IDE channels.....One of them has the Hard Disk Drive as it's master, now if I want maximum performance, you mean to say that I can have my HDD as my Primary Master and Just one other Device as my Secondary Master, that's it?! hmmmmmmm....how much of a difference in performance can it make, guess I'll just keep my Dvd rom and Cd-RW as slaves (Hey, im a student and I collected a lot of pocket money to buy those things, I want to show them off in my case!!!!) hehehehee :P

[ozymango]

hmmmmmmm....how much of a difference in performance can it make, guess I'll just keep my Dvd rom and Cd-RW as slaves (Hey, im a student and I collected a lot of pocket money to buy those things, I want to show them off in my case!!!!

I know the feeling -- I spent $250 on my first CD-RW drive, a Plextor 8X, and I still have that thing hooked up.

As for "performance" differences between various combinations of IDE drive connections, it can get very complex very quickly depending on what you're doing with the computer at any time and which drive is trying to communicate with which other drive, what the UDMA tranfer rate is for each device ... ... but in a nutshell, while I agree that it's always nice if you can just put each drive on its own channel, with most recent drives and computers you've quite a bit of headroom, you can plug in any drive anywhere and things will mostly work just fine for average use.

But if we're talking absolute maximum transfer rates for intense use like moving or burning really big files at high speed, you'll get the best performance (relatively speaking) as long as your devices that are talking to each other at any given moment are on different IDE channels.

Or put simply -- if you're burning from hard drive to DVD or CD, it's a bit more efficient to have one device on one channel, and the other device on the other channel. Same goes for two hard drives, you'll get the fastest transfer rates between those two drives if they're on different channels. As for cable select versus setting Master and Slave manually, I've never noticed any great performance differences either way, though I like cable select just because I swap out drives all the time and this way I don't have to worry about changing jumpers.

So just for ease of wiring, if you've got one hard drive and two CD/DVD drives, I'd put the CD and DVD drives on the same IDE cable, just because you probably don't need to burn directly from the one to the other so no worries about transfer rate. Also I just don't copy even CDs in "real time" from one CD drive to another, too many chances for something going wrong.

EDIT: For more info on the subject of master/slave settings and IDE channels, there's a very useful and readable page on the subject at:

http://www.storagereview.com/guide2000/ref/hdd/if/ide/confPerformance.html

It's not as current as it could be, doesn't have any discussion of SATA -- wait, it does, it's buried, and the author says "I wouldn't look for Serial ATA to even be introduced to the market until late 2001 or even 2002" but it's still a good place to get an introduction to some of this stuff. Hope that helps!

[Sikander]

Thanks, that really helped.

[mattso]

I'm dumb when it comes to these things. I have 1 hard drive & 1 DVD burner. If I want to add a 2nd HD, how do I do it?

Original HD will have OS & software & stuff. New HD will be for video/DV captures. I suppose they need to be on separate IDE channels? I think I've only got 2 IDE channels... so where do I put my DVD burner?

Believe me, this has been haunting me for over 12 months now.

[Sikander]

Well that's not a problem at all. Just open up your case and have an adventurous journey inside ur Case, you'll learn a lot just by looking at the connections.

The thing is, that your computer has 2 IDE channels, and each IDE channel is divided into two, the MASTER and the SLAVE. Just check the cable that goes from your motherboard to your hard disk or to your DVD Writer and you'll notice a connector in the middle of the cable, that's the SLAVE connector, and you can connect any device to it.

Now, for your configuration, if you buy a new hard disk, just put it on the MASTER of your Secondary IDE channel, leave your old hard disk on the MASTER of your Primary IDE channel, and you can connect the Dvd Writer to the slave of either of the two IDE channels. It's pretty simple really, no need to get confused and all.
Good luck.

[mattso]

Hey! Thanks! You probably think I'm a dickhead, but shit nobody's ever explained that to me in so simple terms!

So... 2 HD's on separate channels. Pioneer burner on either channel as "slave"? Great! Which channel is best for the burner? The OS/software stuff or the blank "capture" drive?

[Sikander]

Nobody thinks you're a dickhead, everybody learns sometime.

Im not an expert on the topic but what I have learned so far from studying the forums and stuff, I think you should put the Dvd Writer on the "OS/software" Channel, as you put it, only because Im guessing you'll be transferring most of your stuff from the "capture" drive to the Dvd burner, and so the capture disk on the 2ndry channel and the burner on the first will help increase your data transfer speed. Just check out this link "ozymango" just posted
http://www.storagereview.com/guide2000/ref/hdd/if/ide/confPerformance.html

This link states that data transfer speed from one IDE channel to another one is faster than transfer from the Master of the same to the slave of the same channel.
It cleared up a lot to me, it will help you too.
:P

[mattso]

Thanks so much Sikander, and Ozymango too! It's great to get little things like this cleared up in my head!

[Senor Depacas]

I realize I'm a bit late, but just as a general rule of thumb you should *never* have two CD/DVD drives on the same IDE cable if you intend to burn on the fly.

To support the feedback that you have already received--in your situation the ideal setup would be:

Primary IDE channel master: Hard Drive
Primary IDE channel slave: CD Burner

Secondary IDE channel master: DVD Burner
Secondary IDE channel slave: Nada

This will reduce the likelihood of a hardware conflict and will help to keep the flow of data constant.

You may also want to verify that the correct interface cable is being used. All new IDE hard drives today use UDMA (Ultra DMA) modes and require 80-pin cables.

Hope this helps. Good luck!

[Sikander]

Thanks for the message. But I think i never want to use "on the fly" because i think that will increase the probability of making a coaster by 70% ........right?!?

[Nelson37]

The "Master" and "Slave" designation is made by the jumper on the drive, NOT the cable, unless you are using "Cable Select" cables in which case the drive must be set to CS.

"Master" and "Slave" has nothing to do with performance, it is the pairing and channels. Some pairs of drives will suffer a dramatic performance decrease when on the same channel. If drives are not identical, then this is a possibility, even if both are HD..

Optical drives much lower performance than HD, likely to lower performance if on same channel as HD.

All drives on seperate channel if possible. Only similar performance drives on same channel, if possible. Inexpensive card can add 2 additional channels.

Also, most new mobos allow boot from any drive, not just primary master.

[ozymango]

message. But I think i never want to use "on the fly" because i think that will increase the probability of making a coaster by 70% ........right?!

If by "on the fly" you mean "burning from one CD or DVD directly to another CD or DVD," then absolutely. That is, I would never think of burning from one optical device to another, way too many chances for something to crap out.

Along those lines, while again I myself do tend to swap out drives to various locations depending on what I'm trying to do -- and to complicate things further I also have external drives connected via firewire cable! -- when it comes to speed of transfer, the only time I really sweat it is when burning files.

If you're just moving files across storage devices (hd to hd, DVD or CD to hd), even if speed isn't the highest possible, you don't really risk losing data with slow transfers. It's nice to be fast, but not always critical.

When you're buring a disc, however, if the write fails at any point due to some kind of data/speed bottleneck, your session then fails and you end up with a coaster. So for that reason, if I have two burners, I put them on one bus, and my drives on the other, because I'm most concerned about the writing speed from the hard drive to the DVD or CD.

[bevills1]

Mixing CD/DVD drivers on same channel with harddrive will slow performance of harddrive because harddrives operate much faster than CD/DVD drives but only if on channel separate from slower drives. Harddrives should be on channel separate from CD/DVD drives, and I doubt Master versus Slave makes any significant difference unless drive instructions state it should be Master or Slave as some do. Do some searches on http://www.callforhelptv.com/ on this subject for more details about this. You might also find more on this subject in the computer section of this forum although I've not looked there.

[Sikander]

Okay, after reading all the posts, a new question arises in my mind.

My configuration after I buy a DVD burner will be,
Primary IDE:
Master...........Hard Disk
Slave.............Samsung DVD ROM

Secondary IDE:
Master...............Sony DVD Burner
Slave..................Lite On CD Burner

I've learned that putting an optical drive on the same channel as a hard disk drive will make the hard disk perform slower, because the speed of the opticl drive is not as much as the hard drive. My Question is........Will the hard disk perform slower when the DVD Rom is in use only, or will it perform slower even if the DVD Rom is not in use?
Any expert opinions?

[bevills1]

According to info I found at http://www.callforhelptv.com/ and other sites as well, hardrive performance will be slower period if optical drive is on same channel. It won't hurt anything to test it yourself if you don't believe tests already done. Simply try copying a large file or folder on your harddrive to another folder on hardrive without optical drive connected on same channel, and note time required to copy. Then repeat the test with optical drive connected to same channel. Personally I'd just store the extra drive for possible later use instead of going to all that trouble of testing, but that's your decision.

[budz]

just buy a PCI IDE CONTROLLER CARD for your HARD DRIVE then it will free up all your MOBO IDE CHANNELS. then you won't have to worry about whether or not your HARD DRIVE will be slowed down. i've bought many PCI IDE CONTROLLER CARDS off of EBAY with no problems or worries if the HARD DRIVE will be slowed down.

[Bjs]

The most important things people forget when having more than 3 drives are :

1 : To increase the wattage of their power supply .

To run at full pelt , consider updating to 550watt power supply if you have not already done so .

2 : While adding a pci controller dose free up the origianl ide , these do not provide a fast enough bandwidth due to the pci buss restrictions .

To get top notch performance , use external usb enclosure's to add additional drive's ... this remove's the pci bottle neck on the sub system .

It's also handy when taking large file's from one pc to another .

[redwudz]

Just to add my 2 cents (And IMO): Modern drive controllers and motherboards are much more efficient in data transfers than they used to be. I doubt you will see much of a overall performance hit with a DVD drive and and hard drive on the same IDE channel. It will not cause the hard drive to revert to DVD device speed. You can DL a program like SiSandra and do some benchmarks tests if you like. Maybe I'm wrong.

http://www.overclockersclub.com/downloadcenter/download.php?action=file&id=12

As far as copying 'on the fly', that is more of a risk than I care to take.

Or you can do what budz mentioned and get a PCI IDE controller. If you plan on using a DVD or CD drive on a extra controller, make sure it can work with those devices. A 133Mhz only controller won't.

Just my opinion, but in Sikander's case, I would dump the CD drive and get a second hard drive and you will have the best system improvement for only an investment of $50-$100US.

I used to install DVD ROMs along with a burner when I put together a new computer, but for a little extra, you could install a second burner and then use either or both for CD/DVD burning and reading and not likely wear either out soon.

And Bjs makes a good point about power supplies. If you are running 3 drives (Or more) of any type with a small (250 watt) PS, you may be pushing your luck. You might want to check the temperature of the air coming out of the PS. If it's very hot, then that PS may be stressed and fail early. If it takes the MB, CPU, video card, RAM and the drives with it when it dies, not good.

[bevills1]

Bjs is mistaken about USB being faster than PCI. I found several search hits indicating PCI being considerably faster, and the one that most directly addresses the question is at http://www.futureproducers.com/forums/showthread/threadid/133458. I'll leave it to others to search and verify other references. Now onboard USB (i.e. USB on motherboard) is faster than PCI USB adapter due to it's being close relative to chipset which is the fastest bus in the system. Perhaps that is what Bjs may have meant to refer.

[bevills1]

Power supply larger than 250 watt isn't needed unless the system has more than 2 harddrives according to TheScreenSavers and CallForHelp that used to be on TechTV which unfortunately merged with G4TV who promptly discontinued both shows. The reason more power is needed for more than 2 harddrives is the power required for those drives to spin up to speed on boot, but optical drives don't speed up on boot unless discs are left in the drives of course. Also I can personally verify this since I've built 4 or 5 systems with 2 harddrives and 2 optical drives each which have operated for years with no problems.

[budz]

redwudz wrote:

If you plan on using a DVD or CD drive on a extra controller, make sure it can work with those devices. A 133Mhz only controller won't.

If you're going to use a PCI IDE CONTROLLER CARD for a DVD burner you need to make sure the chipset in the controller card is a SILICON IMAGE 680 chipset.
Promise Technology PCI IDE CONTROLLER cards only work with HARD DRIVES. They do not work with DVD or CD BURNERS.

I have 1 computer that uses a Promise IDE CONTROLLER card for my 2 hard drives. The mobo IDE CONTROLLER has 3 dvd burners and 1 dvdrom. This setup is 3 years old with no problems.

My fastest P4 pc has the SILICON IMAGE 680 CHIPSET pci controller which has just 1 DVD burner attached to it. Mobo Ide Controllers have 1 dvd burner, 1 dvdrom & 1 PATA hard drive. I have 2 SATA hard drives in this pc.

[ricoman]

Just for my 2 cents. I have 2 hard drives with separate SATA connections and 3 burners on 2 IDE cables. The BenQ 1640 us alone on 1, and the LG4167 is master to the ND-3500 slave on the other cable. The 3500 has slowed down DRASTICALLY, both reading and writing. It will only burn at 2.3x even when set to 8x. So, setting an optical drive to slave can definitely effect performance. And by the way, The 2 HDs with and external HD and the 3 burners all run fine with a 350W power supply. An Everest analysis show temperature at normal range. If anyone has an idea how to speed up my old reliable 3500, I'm all ears.