Master / Save drive question please!

[eVaoVe]

So I have 1 DVD drive, and 1 Hard Drive. My question is, do i put them on the same IDE cable, and put 1 Master and 1 Slave (which one), or do i put them on their own cables and set them each to master. Does any of this make sense? I get my parts in tomorrow. Can someone school me real quick on the basics.

 

[The J]

If you put them on the same IDE channel, then the hard drive would have to be Master and the DVD drive would be Slave. You can put them together or separate; either way will work. Putting each on its own channel would require you set both to Master.

 

[JaRb0y]

if you got enough connectors on the motherboard, put each on its own cable and set each as master

 

[kd2777]

Just run one cable and save time and airspace. Set the HDD to master and the CD to Slave, however if you run two cables you DON'T necessarily need to set them both as master. My second optical drive, as we speak, is set to slave on my 2nd IDE channel, because out of my own laziness I didn't set it back to master after having it in another system and it works just fine. The only odd thing is on the POST screen I see HDD and Optical on IDE-1 and nothing on master IDE-2 and CD on slave IDE-2, no biggy to me.

KD

 

[kd2777]

Originally posted by: JaRb0y
if you got enough connectors on the motherboard, put each on its own cable and set each as master

There is no advantage to that. It's just wasting cable.

KD

 

[JaRb0y]

Originally posted by: kd2777

Originally posted by: JaRb0y
if you got enough connectors on the motherboard, put each on its own cable and set each as master

There is no advantage to that. It's just wasting cable.

KD

putting a cdrw/dvdr on separate ide cables improves performance or is this incorrect? if it is correct, it doesn't apply to hdd/cd?

 

[Ryoga]

Ther is an advantage to putting the devices on their own channel: bandwidth. But since neither a HD nor a DVD drive can fill half of an interface's bandwidth (except for burst transfer) it's a moot point.

Historically, putting a CD drive on the same channel as a HDD would cause the channel to operate at the speed of the CD drive (usually UDMA-2 or some PIO mode, versus UDMA-4 or -5 for most HDD). But that hasn't been the case for a few years.

 

[MercenaryForHire]

Originally posted by: Ryoga
Ther is an advantage to putting the devices on their own channel: bandwidth. But since neither a HD nor a DVD drive can fill half of an interface's bandwidth (except for burst transfer) it's a moot point.

Historically, putting a CD drive on the same channel as a HDD would cause the channel to operate at the speed of the CD drive (usually UDMA-2 or some PIO mode, versus UDMA-4 or -5 for most HDD). But that hasn't been the case for a few years.

Copy a file from the DVD to the HDD and tell me it's a moot point.

Separate channels, both Master.

- M4H