Question

Connection of Drives on new PC

Asked by: jajr

I'm building a PC from scratch,and have received conflicting advice from others about how to connect the drives.  Here are the internal drives:

Hard Drive Western Digital 80Gig Caviar SE.
CD RW.
DVD ROM.
ZIP 750.

These will go on an ASUS A7N8X MB. Processor will be AMD Athlon XP 2400. Memory will be PC2700 DDR333 RAM, total 768 MB.

I need to know which to connect to the Primary or Secondary, and which to be master or slave.

Thanks.

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Asked On
2002-12-23 at 18:27:30ID20435264
Topic

General Computer Systems

Participating Experts
3
Points
150
Comments
5

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Answers

 

by: cap269Posted on 2002-12-23 at 20:02:42ID: 7627398

If it were me, I would put the 80GB HDD as primary on the first IDE channel, with the ZIP as secondary. Then the CD-RW as primary on the second IDE channel, with the DVD-ROM as secondary.

 

by: cap269Posted on 2002-12-23 at 20:03:47ID: 7627403

In your terms, 80GB HDD as Master on the primary channel, ZIP as Slave on the primary channel; the CD-RW as Master on the secondary channel, and the DVD-ROM as Slave on the secondary channel.

 

by: ProvenTechPosted on 2002-12-23 at 21:44:26ID: 7627630

I also would put the HDD and Zip drives on the primary channel and the CR-RW and DVD on the secondary.  This will let your optical drives perform at their best.
However, some CD burning software such as NERO requires the optical drives to be on separate channels if you want to copy CD's "on-the-fly".  

 

by: OnlineGuitaristPosted on 2002-12-24 at 00:17:59ID: 7627908

Here is the Formula I use:
Most Used Device     - Primary Master
2nd Most Used Device - Secondary Master
3rd Most Used Device - Secondary Slave
4th Most Used Device - Primary Slave

PriMas  -Hard Drive Western Digital 80Gig Caviar SE.
PriSlav -ZIP 750
SecMas  -CD RW.
SecSlav -DVD ROM.

HOWEVER - Consider This:
The IDE channel that your hard drive's on is usually performing the most communication to your computer's bus.  Since there is a limited amount of data that can pass through the bus, e.g. IDE RIBBON, then you want to minimize the throughput on both.  If it were me, I would put the ZIP drive on the same channel as the Hard Drive because I do more CD data transfers than ZIP transfers.

It's based on your situation really, and entirely up to you, because if you do more work with the ZIP than with the CDR, then put the ZIP on the Secondary Master and the CDR on the Secondary SLAVE to avoid those buffer underrun errors while burning at 48x.  One might consider a buffer underrun error with the CDR, but taking in mind that it's a NEW CDR, it has the capability to bypass those, however, use this configuration only if you use the ZIP more than the CDR and DVD, which I doubt you would.  

And of coarse if you watch movies on your DVD, you want plenty of bandwidth to watch them, so that goes on the Secondary channel, especially when you are *Backing Up* those damned DVD's to your hard drive.

If you have an older CDR, most definately put it on the secondary Master.  

 

by: jajrPosted on 2002-12-24 at 08:12:34ID: 7629026

Appreciate all the advice. OnlineGuitarist provided a good overall understanding of the issue.  Thanks!

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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