Re: should I change how my drives are cabled?

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There is a potential issue due to cabling. High speed harddrives can require
80 wire data cables for best performance and sometimes won't work at all on
40 wire data cables. The existing data cable for the optical drives might
only be 40 wires.

"Bill Ridgeway" <info@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
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"Anna" <myname@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
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"Talal Itani" <titani@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
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Hello,

I have in my PC two hard drives, and two CD-ROM drives. The two hard
drives are connected to the same IDE cable. The two CD-ROM drives are
connected to the same IDE cable. Do I speed things up if I connect a
hard drive, and a CD-ROM drive to the same cable? My computer is
running XP.

Thanks.
T.I.


As you shortly will discover, you're probably going to get a number of
conflicting responses recommending this or that configuration of your
IDE-connected devices. All I can tell you is that based upon my own
experience and tests the computer facility I was associated with
conducted a few years ago on this very issue -- in virtually every case,
when working with modern equipment, aside from connecting one's working
PATA HDD as Primary Master, it really didn't matter performance-wise how
the remaining drives (hard drives & optical drives) were connected on the
two IDE channels. Nearly all of our tests were conducted with connecting
two hard drives and two optical drives - a CD-ROM & a CD-DVD burner.

Note I said in "virtually every case" there were no significant
performance
differences regardless of the IDE device configuration., There were,
however, some rather rare situations where it *did* matter with respect
to HDD connections/configurations. This usually involved the
encoding/decoding of extremely large video files (gigabytes in size) so
this was an issue that would involve only a extremely small percentage of
PC users.

Also, again in some very rare instances, where the process involved
copying CDs (we didn't use DVDs at the time of these tests) from one
optical drive to another optical drive, there were some instances (rare
as they might be) where the configuration of the optical drives *did*
matter in terms of performance. Strangely enough, in that situation we
were unable to come up with a hard & fast rule as to the best
configuration of the optical drives. In some cases we found better, i.e.,
faster, data transfer rates when both optical drives were connected on
the same channel. In other cases we found it was best to connect each on
a separate IDE channel. And we could find no correlation involving the
make/model of these optical drives. It was quite puzzling. But let me
emphasize that these were relatively rare exceptions. As I previously
stated, we generally found *no* significant performance differences
regardless of how the optical drives were connected/configured.

I would add one additional thing. If both HDDs are bootable devices and
the user has occasion to boot to one or the other drive, then it might be
necessary to connect/configure the second HDD as Secondary Master, rather
than as a Slave to the Primary Master or a Slave on the secondary IDE
channel. We came across a number of motherboards that balked at booting
to a potentially bootable HDD that was connected in the Slave position.
But, in general, it simply didn't matter.

But do this. Experiment for yourself in determining the precise
configuration of your IDE devices. In this instance don't rely on my
advice or anyone else's advice. Try different configurations of your IDE
devices and run simple speed tests based on your normal & usual
day-to-day activities with the computer, e.g., accessing programs,
moving/copying files, burning CDs, etc. See if you can determine any
performance difference depending upon how this or that device is
connected, and thus determine the best setup for your particular needs
should there be any significant differences.
Anna

I don't want to detract from your clear explanation. However, although
you say there are rare occasions when the configuration does matter you
haven't commented on the significance of the configuration was when it was
found. The instances of configuration making any differences may be rare
but if, when it does occur performance is also insignificant makes it even
less worth worrying about.

Regards.

Bill Ridgeway



.

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