Hard Drive Questions (2)

[stuhood]

I have a most likely simple question for any one with a bit of experience (more than I):

I have 2 7200 RPM HDDs, and I know for a fact that one of them is much faster than the other. I also have a CD-Burner. That is 3 IDE devices, and 2 IDE cables/ports. Should I put the slower HDD on the same IDE cable as the CD-Burner (8x4x32x) or the faster HDD (IBM 120GXP)?

In both cases, I am afraid to slow down the device it is with. Can anyone give me their experience on this topic?

ALSO:

As mentioned above, I have 2 HDDs. Currently, the master drive (IDE 0) is disk F: (don't ask me why WindowsXP did this, as I have no clue) and has XP installed on it, because it is the faster of the 2 and the slave drive is disk C: (IDE 1)(the drive letter can be changed, as it is not the boot drive).

If I were to now want to install Windows ME (so I can get my stupid DC10+ to capture effectively, as the drivers for XP are not yet mature enough), how would I go about it? Would ME want to install to the master drive? and if so, would it settle for the drive that is currently C

Thanks a lot for your help.
If you have more questions about me computer, click the marvelous little link in the title area of this post for all the info.

stuhood

[KingJohn]

The IDE channel will take its timing from the slowest device, so if you put a slow CD-ROM on the same lead at a 7200 hard drive, it will slow it down. I have 2 IBM 7200 on one lead, they both run perfect, originally I had one of them on the lead with the CD-Writer and it was much slower.

The links on your hard drive have "Master" and "Slave" master being IDE 0 = C: slave = IDE 1 D: the formatting of the drive and partitioning also sets Drive C: as "Active" which makes that drive bootable. Only one drive can be active.

Windows can be installed on any drive, but it still needs to boot from the bootable disk, so drive C bootable would be the best drive to install to.

[stuhood]

Thanks. So the best solution (if I want to get max speed out of both of them) is to get a PCI IDE controller?

ALSO

For my second question: could you translate? would it be possible to install Win ME to the slave hard drive which Win XP has named the C

Thanks again.

stuhood

[KingJohn]

Why do you want another controller ?, Put both hard drives on one lead, and the other 2 on the other lead. Selecting master and slave as appropriate on the device jumpers. FDISK would have already set a drive active to be the boot device.

You can have Windows XP, and ME on drive C, using some dual boot software, never used any myself, but they do work. On boot up a menu will be displayed asking you which to boot from. You may need different partitions for this, if the format is different, which I believe it is.


As for installing on different drives, like I said you can install those operation systems on any drive, BUT quite a lot of the installation still needs to be on your boot drive, so most people install to dive C: IDE 0

Don't know why you want to install those anyway Can't beat Windows SE for video work.

As for the naming of letters, if your drive has been recognized on boot up (Before windows loads) then that will dictate the drive letters, which it gets from the BIOS.

If your drive is only recognized after the OS is loaded, then the drive letters will be changed, you may be able to change this in the control panel > system > device manager > disk drive >properties

[stuhood]

as you said before, the slowest device on each cable will slow down the faster one. Therefore, if I put my slower hard drive on the cable with the faster hard drive, it will slow down the faster hard drive to the same speed. If I put it on the cable with my CD-Burner, the slower hard drive will be slowed down even more to the same speed as the burner. THEREFORE again... if I want to get max speed out of all of them, I need another controller.

[Trik]

Actually it doesn't matter in IDE.
Windows can only access 1 IDE device at a time. It can either read or write to one IDE device at any one time.
1 IDE device on 1 IDE channel at a time..

So it doesn't matter what devices you have on what channels or what their sharing the channel with.

[stuhood]

oh

wonderful then! that simplifies things...



still wondering if it is possible to install ME on a slave drive (C: ) after I already have XP installed on the master drive (F: )...

[KingJohn]

as you said before, the slowest device on each cable will slow down the faster one. Therefore, if I put my slower hard drive on the cable with the faster hard drive, it will slow down the faster hard drive to the same speed. If I put it on the cable with my CD-Burner, the slower hard drive will be slowed down even more to the same speed as the burner. THEREFORE again... if I want to get max speed out of all of them, I need another controller.

I have 2 7200 RPM HDDs, So they are not the same speed?, but they may have the same timeings.

So yes, if the timings are different you need another controller, do a search for some software that tests the speed and access times, I did have a good program when I first installed mine, it showed a huge difference when moving them both to the same channel, but don't have it now.

You need to see for yourself what is happening, as apposed to thinking they are slower, if you can measure it accurately then switching on things like DMA support, can also be measured accurately.

search for "Performance Test" in a search engine.

see also
http://www.storage.ibm.com/hdd/support/download.htm

[stuhood]

DMA is automatic in XP, and I have used Sandra, Studio 7 and PCMark to determine that the older hard drive, which I have said is slower, is in fact slower than my newer IBM hard drive. Otherwise I wouldn't have asked the question.

And no, not all hard drives are the same speed, even if they say 7200 RPM and ATA-100

[KingJohn]

I edited my last post..

Well all "Good" hard drives are the same speed, that's the difference between a cheap one and a good one

I have 2 Deskstar 40Gb

Which are spot on, I did have 1 IBM and 1 Seagate, but took the Seagate back for another IBM.

Well since you already have the test software, you can experiment and see the results of you work, cant you ?

[stuhood]

yes, I can. thank you.