config: 2 x optical drives & 2 x HDDs

[Jon]

I want to add a second hard drive to my pc (XP Pro, standalone workgroup). I
currently have an 80GB with two partitions and a separately bootable OS on
each partition (one is for 'production'; one is for 'test and dev'). I plan
on getting a Maxtor 120GB drive, removing the partition on the existing
drive and once again having two OS's; one on each drive - the one on the new
drive being for test and dev only.

I also have a DVD-ROM and a DVD-RW connected. Currently, the single HDD is
on the primary IDE channel, as master, with the DVD-ROM as slave on that
same channel. The DVD-RW is master on the secondary IDE channel.

What is the optimal configuration for two HDDs and two optical drives? My
feeling at this point is to add the new HDD (which will primarily be used
for mp3, photographs etc) as the slave on the secondary channel.

thanks

 

[Chris Holden]

I want to add a second hard drive to my pc (XP Pro, standalone workgroup). I
currently have an 80GB with two partitions and a separately bootable OS on
each partition (one is for 'production'; one is for 'test and dev'). I plan
on getting a Maxtor 120GB drive, removing the partition on the existing
drive and once again having two OS's; one on each drive - the one on the new
drive being for test and dev only.

I also have a DVD-ROM and a DVD-RW connected. Currently, the single HDD is
on the primary IDE channel, as master, with the DVD-ROM as slave on that
same channel. The DVD-RW is master on the secondary IDE channel.

What is the optimal configuration for two HDDs and two optical drives? My
feeling at this point is to add the new HDD (which will primarily be used
for mp3, photographs etc) as the slave on the secondary channel.

thanks

It depends. If the HDDs are UDMA/ATA 100 or faster, you will be better off
performance-wise if both HDDs are on the same channel. However, if you do a
lot of CD to CD copies, having both CDs on the same channel is a pain.
All in all, I prefer to have the HDDs on one channel as master and slave and
the slower optical devices on the second channel. That way the HDDs can take
advantage of the higher speeds. It's pretty much horses for courses.
Chris

 

[Yves Leclerc]

You could also add one of the add-on UDMA/100/133 adapter card. This would
add 4 more drives connects to your system, thus giving you 2 extra Master
connections.

Y.

 

[Alex Nichol]

What is the optimal configuration for two HDDs and two optical drives? My
feeling at this point is to add the new HDD (which will primarily be used
for mp3, photographs etc) as the slave on the secondary channel.

I prefer in a similar setup to have the two HDs as Masters on the two
channels, with the optical devices as slaves. Have the writer on the
same channel as the hard drive you are less likely to burn files from
(ie probably with the smaller drive)

 

[Guest]

I have a comment and a question. As to which drives you should mix and match, it really depends what you are using all those devices for. For example, since you have a DVD-RW, you want to make sure that the HD that you use for intermediate storage when you burn a DVD is not on the same IDE channel. That way you will get the shortest burn times. If you are capturing digital video from a camcorder, you want the video (and temporary) files written to a different HD than the HD that has the OS (and its swapfile) on it. And those 2 HDs should be on different IDE channels. This all can get very confusing. Unfortunately, the best bet is to get a really high end PC with the fastest CPU, a lot of RAM, fast drives and an ATA/133 IDE controller. Another option is to remove the DVD-ROM drive altogether and just used the DVD-RW for everything. The only option you lose is doing a direct DVD copy, but you're generally better off burning an image of the DVD first to the HD anyway as an intermediate step.

My question is, how do you install the new PCI IDE card? Does XP force it to share IRQs with the motherboard IDE controller? Once you install it and you switch the drives (I assume one by one would be a good idea), what happens when you switch the HD with the OS on it to the PCI IDE controller? Does XP boot up normally or do you have to do a Repair Install?