Slow if share IDE port between HDD and CD-ROM ?

[Larry]

Are the following true for my PC (2 years old with 2 IDE ports and no
SATA) and it runs WinXP:


"...make sure that your CD-ROM drive isn't on the same IDE channel as
your hard drive. Sharing of IDE channels can dramatically slow down
CD-ROM and hard disk access."

http://www.tweak3d.net/tweak/cdrom/



"Make sure your hard drive is not connected to the same IDE port as
your CD/DVD-ROM. Each IDE port is programmed to operate at the slower
of the two devices on the port, so you could be slowing down access
to your primary hard drive by leaving a CD-ROM on the same channel.
Put your CD/DVD-ROM on the Secondary IDE port."

from: http://www.techbargains.com/hottips/hottip12/index.cfm

 

[Rod Speed]

Are the following true for my PC (2 years old with
2 IDE ports and no SATA) and it runs WinXP:
Nope.

"...make sure that your CD-ROM drive isn't on the same
IDE channel as your hard drive. Sharing of IDE channels
can dramatically slow down CD-ROM and hard disk access."

http://www.tweak3d.net/tweak/cdrom/

Grossly obsolete 'advice'

"Make sure your hard drive is not connected to the same IDE
port as your CD/DVD-ROM. Each IDE port is programmed
to operate at the slower of the two devices on the port,

Hasnt been true for years and years now.

so you could be slowing down access to your primary
hard drive by leaving a CD-ROM on the same channel.
Put your CD/DVD-ROM on the Secondary IDE port."

from: http://www.techbargains.com/hottips/hottip12/index.cfm

Grossly obsolete 'advice'

 

[DaveW]

It is, indeed, true.

 

[Rod Speed]

It is, indeed, true.

Not isnt, and hasnt been for a long time now.

 

[johns]

Rod is right, y'all.

johns

 

[Praxiteles Democritus]

Not isnt, and hasnt been for a long time now.

I'm with Rod on this one. It was true years ago but it isn't anymore.

 

[Ralph Wade Phillips]

Howdy!

I'm with Rod on this one. It was true years ago but it isn't anymore.

*nod* It might be true during OS install also, until the UDMA
drivers get installed.

But as soon as the chipset says UDMA (actually before!), the two
devices on an IDE channel run at whatever speed they run, while they're
running.

So advice that says both run at the same speed are like "Be sure to
seat all the DRAMs on the motherboard, especially if you have 512K or more
of onboard RAM. Also, be certain to seat the 80286 processor well"....

RwP

 

[Impmon]

Are the following true for my PC (2 years old with 2 IDE ports and no
SATA) and it runs WinXP:

That statement has been around for almost as long as ATA CD-ROM have
been around. But I don't know if anyone actually used benchmark with
HD and CD-ROM on same IDE cable and then again with those 2 separate
to see if there's difference in HD performance.

For me, it's just more convenient to have them on separate IDE because
I have 2 HDs on primary channel.

 

[Derek Baker]

That statement has been around for almost as long as ATA CD-ROM have
been around. But I don't know if anyone actually used benchmark with
HD and CD-ROM on same IDE cable and then again with those 2 separate
to see if there's difference in HD performance.

For me, it's just more convenient to have them on separate IDE because
I have 2 HDs on primary channel.

Surely that's slow for copying from one HD to the other?

 

[Conor]

It is, indeed, true.

Only if you're still living in 1995.


--
Conor

If Pac-Man affected us as kids, we'd all be running around in darkened
rooms, munching magic pills and listening to repetitive electronic
music.

 

[Rod Speed]

That statement has been around for almost as long as ATA CD-ROM
have been around. But I don't know if anyone actually used benchmark
with HD and CD-ROM on same IDE cable and then again with those
2 separate to see if there's difference in HD performance.

Corse they have.

 

[Rod Speed]

Surely that's slow for copying from one HD to the other?

Nope, because most apps that are used to do
the copying dont overlap access to both drives.

 

[Kill Bill]

Are the following true for my PC (2 years old with 2 IDE ports and no
SATA) and it runs WinXP:

http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/if/ide/confTiming-c.html

 

[fj]

Nope, because most apps that are used to do
the copying dont overlap access to both drives.

Just to clarify. Would 2 drive, RAID 0 performance be the same if the two
drives were master/slave vs one on each IDE channel?

Thanks

 

[larry moe 'n curly]

Are the following true for my PC (2 years old with 2
IDE ports and no SATA) and it runs WinXP:

"...make sure that your CD-ROM drive isn't on the same
IDE channel as your hard drive. Sharing of IDE
channels can dramatically slow down CD-ROM and hard
disk access."

http://www.tweak3d.net/tweak/cdrom/

That happen only once to me, several years ago, when I decided to
install VIA's latest weekly driver package revision. The drives ran
fine when I installed older or newer VIA drivers. I also tested mobos
equipped with SiS Intel chipsets and a PCI IDE card based on a Silicon
Image chip, but none of them showed any slowdown of the CD or HD.

 

[Kill Bill]

Just to clarify. Would 2 drive, RAID 0 performance be the same if the two
drives were master/slave vs one on each IDE channel?

Thanks

I'd say no, much better to have them on seperate channels. With IDTiming
you won't slow down a HD with a CD-ROM but there's still an IDE limitation
where you can only read or write from one device at a time on each IDE
channel.

 

[Rod Speed]

Just to clarify. Would 2 drive, RAID 0 performance be the same if
the two drives were master/slave vs one on each IDE channel?

Nope, separate channels should be better in that particular situation.

Thats nothing like the original situation tho.

 

[David Maynard]

Just to clarify. Would 2 drive, RAID 0 performance be the same if the two
drives were master/slave vs one on each IDE channel?

Thanks

No, because IDE cannot talk to two devices on the same channel at the same
time but it can if they are on separate channels.

 

[Mark M]

No, because IDE cannot talk to two devices on the same channel
at the same time but it can if they are on separate channels.

So from what you say, if I have an XP system partition on one hard
drive then the swap file (assuming I want to fiddle with placing my
swap file) should not only be on another hard drive but that other
hard drive should be on another IDE channel. Is this correct?

----

I also use a PCI card to give me an extra two IDE channels. The card
is based on the Silicon Image 0680 Ultra-133 chip.
(I don't use its RAID capability. http://tinyurl.com/a685d)

In terms of performance does it make a difference if a 7200rpm hard
drive is on one of the two IDE channels on the motherboard (whose VIA
Via 266A/8235 chipset provides ATA133) rather on one of the IDE
channels on my adaptor card?


Thanks for any info

Mark

 

[kony]

So from what you say, if I have an XP system partition on one hard
drive then the swap file (assuming I want to fiddle with placing my
swap file) should not only be on another hard drive but that other
hard drive should be on another IDE channel. Is this correct?

"Should" is relative. Yes, having the swapfile drive on a
different IDE channel (or controller of course) will
increase performance some in theory. In practice, "most" of
the performance gain is from use of the second drive,
because the drives are still slower than the interfaces.

If you find swapfile performance is an issue, more likely
you need to add memory to the system, rather than (or at
least before) focusing on where that swapfile is.

----

I also use a PCI card to give me an extra two IDE channels. The card
is based on the Silicon Image 0680 Ultra-133 chip.
(I don't use its RAID capability. http://tinyurl.com/a685d)

In terms of performance does it make a difference if a 7200rpm hard
drive is on one of the two IDE channels on the motherboard (whose VIA
Via 266A/8235 chipset provides ATA133) rather on one of the IDE
channels on my adaptor card?

The adapter card is slower, because it must use PCI bus to
get the data to southbridge, while the integrated controller
is a southbridge function pseudo-parallel to the PCI bus.
That also means that using the PCI card will reduce PCI bus
time and bandwidth available to any other PCI devices which
may (or may not) need a lot of time. Common cards needing a
lot of time are video capture cards, external USB/firewire,
sound cards, Gigabit network adapters. The sound card is
the most commonly reported as problematic because listening
to audio is a real-time event... anyone will recognize sound
stuttering but far fewer people actually benchmark their
Gigabit or firewire performance (for example).

For this reason it's best to leave lesser used devices on
the PCI IDE controller. Archival data drives or optical
drives (if they work ok on it, some controller cards have
problems with optical drives, and some require jumper or
bios changes, and some require at least one hard drive
connected to load the card bios , allow booting from any
optical drive connected to it.