Advice on how to configure IDE devices

[Mr. Land]

Hi everyone. Will winter ever be over?

I wonder if someone could give me some IDE configuration advice.

I have an IDE DVD recorder drive I am trying to add to my XP Pro system.
I tried what I thought would be a reasonable configuration, but I
immediately noticed a big performance hit.

Some info from System Information:

Processor: x86 Family 15 Model 1 Stepping 2 GenuineIntel ~1800MHz
Total Physical Memory: 512.00 MB

Before adding the DVD recorder, my IDE layout was as follows:

Primary Channel: Master = 100GB ATA/100 drive (Ultra Mode 5)
Slave = empty
Secondary Channel: Master = DVD-ROM drive
Slave = 5GB ATA/33 drive (Ultra Mode 2)

The 100GB ATA/100 drive is connected with the high-speed type ribbon cable.

Going on the assumption that the new DVD recorder needed to be a master
(as per the docs), the configuration I tried was as follows:

Primary Channel: Master = 100GB ATA/100 drive (Ultra Mode 5)
Slave = 5GB ATA/33 drive (Ultra Mode 2)
Secondary Channel: Master = DVD recorder
Slave = DVD-ROM drive

So, I moved the 5GB slave to the primary channel, connecting it to the
middle connector on that high speed IDE cable.

I can't give hard quantifying numbers, but my system performance is
very bad now. Apps take a very long time to load. Once they've
loaded, they appear to run at about the same speed as before, so
I'm thinking that I've somehow munged up the speed of the 100GB
drive.

With the new configuration, device manager reports the following:

Primary IDE Channel: Device 0 Current Transfer Mode: Ultra DMA Mode 5
Device 1 Current Transfer Mode: Ultra DMA Mode 2

Secondary IDE Channel: Device 0 Current Transfer Mode: Ultra DMA Mode 2
Device 1 Current Transfer Mode: Ultra DMA Mode 2

Even though this states the 100GB is indeed operating in Mode 5, I can't
help but suspect that it was doing much, much better when it was alone
on the primary channel.

Any thoughts, suggestions will be much appreciated!

Thank you.

 

[Jack]

As far as I know if you put two different drives on one channel then both
operate at the speed of the slowest drive, ATA33 UDMA2 in your case.

You should replace your old 5GB drive with fast one if you need second drive
or just remove it

 

[Tom Scales]

That hasn't been true for several years, depending on the OS and
Motherboard. He has a P4-1.8, so likely it handles the two drives separately
just fine.

That said, the 5GB is so old, who can say. If you need more disk storage,
replace the 5GB. You can do it for $40 or so. If not, just lose that drive.

The DVD recorder can be master or slave -- doesn't matter. Are you sure
your cables don't require cable select?

Tom

 

[Eric Gisin]

Nonsense.

 

[Eric Gisin]

It could be the two hard drives don't like each other or bad cable.

Try jumpering both drives as cable select. Check Event Log for atapi errors.

 

[Rod Speed]

Hi everyone. Will winter ever be over?

No winter here.

I wonder if someone could give me some IDE configuration advice.

The obvious thing to do is to bin the 5GB drive. Its such a small
percentage of the total hard drive space that its not worth keeping.

If you need more than one drive as a destination
for backups, you get rather more protection with an
external drive, because then a power supply failure cant
kill both drives if the external has its own power supply.

Or just write the backups to DVD-RW instead. About the
same size and you get more protection against theft of
the system and against the house burning down etc if
you take one copy of the media out of the house etc.

 

[Mr. Land]

Thanks to everyone for all the great info and suggestions. Appreciate
your generous advice. Cheers.