WHAT ARE PRIMARY&2ndary MASTER/SLAVE???

[RAHUL GHOSH]

My problems are:---
(1)I'm having 2 HardDisks & 2 CDdrives in my system..
My HDD's RPM may not be same, i'm not very sure..But how
does it affect system boot time if RPM of both drives are
dissimilar?? Because if the RAMs doesn't match(in case u r
having 2 RAMs in the system), then the system will not
boot..Similarly if the HDdrives' RPM are not similar then
how will it affect the system--will it ever boot or boot
slow???
(2)Finally please tell me the correct rule to connect
2HDDs & 2CD drives with the IDE ports of the motherboard
in terms of primary & secondary master/slave ...I mean to
say how should one connect the 2 harddisks & 2 CD drives
with the IDE ports of motherboard in terms of primary &
secondary master/slave??? whether the HDDs should be
connected as primary master & 2ndary master or as primary
master & primary slave???
(3)Also please tell me win-XP works better on which--FAT32
or NTFS ???

Please help,
Ragards, Rahul...

 

[Phil]

See below........

My problems are:---
(1)I'm having 2 HardDisks & 2 CDdrives in my system..
My HDD's RPM may not be same, i'm not very sure..But how
does it affect system boot time if RPM of both drives are
dissimilar?? Because if the RAMs doesn't match(in case u r
having 2 RAMs in the system), then the system will not
boot..Similarly if the HDdrives' RPM are not similar then
how will it affect the system--will it ever boot or boot
slow???

Doesn't matter. XP only uses the drive that has the boot info on it to boot.
RPM speed of a slave drive doesn't matter.

(2)Finally please tell me the correct rule to connect
2HDDs & 2CD drives with the IDE ports of the motherboard
in terms of primary & secondary master/slave ...I mean to
say how should one connect the 2 harddisks & 2 CD drives
with the IDE ports of motherboard in terms of primary &
secondary master/slave??? whether the HDDs should be
connected as primary master & 2ndary master or as primary
master & primary slave???

HDD #1 - master
HDD #2 - slave
Both on the same IDE channel

CD #1 - master
CD #2 - slave
Both on the same IDE channel

(3)Also please tell me win-XP works better on which--FAT32
or NTFS ???

It doesn't "work better". NTFS supports more features such as security and
encyption that fat32 does not. I'd go ntfs.

 

[Gary R.]

The drive RPM doesn't matter as far as configuring them. However, if there
is much difference in age of the drives, you are probably better off putting
each one as master on their own IDE cable. An older slower (ratings are
expressed as PIO mode, or UDMA (33,66, etc) or ATA (100, 133, etc.) drive
can slow the data transfer of a faster one on the same IDE cable. RPM
doesn't matter in that respect.

You will probably get as many opinions as there are possibilities on the
rest of it. I personally would, unless the drives had similar ATA ratings,
put one hard drive and one CD drive on each IDE channel. Perhaps if you use
the second drive to hold your data/music, etc that you'll be burning with a
CD burner, put the burner as slave on the primary IDE along with the first
hard drive.

There's really no fixed configuration that is "right", you can find advice
that a burner must be master, or a DVD drive must be master, and I've found
that none of them are true in all cases. Just watch that you keep the
newer, higher ATA/DMA/PIO mode drives from being on the same line as an old
one.

NTFS is a better system; if you don't have to access it from dos or Windows
9x/ME, you might as well use NTFS, however I've found that FAT32 works fine
with XP when necessary.

Gary

 

[Alex Nichol]

(1)I'm having 2 HardDisks & 2 CDdrives in my system..
My HDD's RPM may not be same, i'm not very sure..But how
does it affect system boot time if RPM of both drives are
dissimilar??

The different drives do not affect each other in any half way modern
system

(2)Finally please tell me the correct rule to connect
2HDDs & 2CD drives with the IDE ports of the motherboard
in terms of primary & secondary master/slave

I regard the best way is to have the hard disks one on each cable as
Masters, and the CDs as the slaves. That allows for independent access
along different cables when wanting to copy between HDs or to copy to a
HD from the opposite CD. The important things are to be sure HDs that
share with CDs are masters, and on the end connector of the cable, with
CDs as slaves on the central one. And use quality cables with 80
conductors - ground ones between the 40 signal ones

 

[Alex Nichol]

An older slower (ratings are
expressed as PIO mode, or UDMA (33,66, etc) or ATA (100, 133, etc.) drive
can slow the data transfer of a faster one on the same IDE cable. RPM
doesn't matter in that respect.

Not on any half way modern controller. Only on ones so old as to show
in Device Manager as 'Single Fifo' - meaning probably ten years back,
and not supporting UDMA anyway