IDE channels
 

Ok, I'm going to get my new computer any day now...
How should I connect my Ide devices?
I'm going to have 2 hard drives, 1 DVD and one CD-burner.
I've reed somewhere that if you want to copy a cd directly (not via hd) the cd-player and the cd-burner should not be on the same channel. On the other hand; putting a cd/dvd on the same channel as a hd could lower the performance of the hd. True?
And if I put the dvd and the burner on the same channel, which one should be master?
So what setup would you recommend? Should I even get a extra card to get more ide channels? I might need it anyway, sooner or later...

Planning to install a dual boot between Mandrake 9 and Win (2000 or Xp).
The machine will be a P4 2.53Ghz/512Mb.

/Michap

I had to toy with (a similar situation to) this, myself, when I was building my machine. I actually got around this by getting myself a PCI-IDE card so that I could have all my devices as their own master on their own channel. I, however, didn't have 2 harddisks, but I had an Atapi ZIP drive. If, however, this is not an option then I would have the 2 harddisks together and the two CD devices together. You have to ask yourself: would you rather you have 1 slow harddive and the ability to copy CDs on the fly, or would you rather have to make CD images but have two harddisk that run at their super-quick speed?

i went for a ide card as well, great investment. but then i end up finding devices to fill it up with, which is daft, but never mind...

The speed won't slow down if you place the DVD or CD-R on the same channel of the hard drive. I have a ZIP-100 drive on the same channel as my hard drive. It doesn't slow the hard drive down a bit. If you are worry then find DVD or CD-R that can handle UDMA66 and PIO 4. Hard drives that are ATA100 or ATA133 will not come close to those specs. Serial ATA fixes this problem and many others that parallel ATA has. Serial ATA controllers cost over US $100. The only hard drive manufacture that I know have Serial ATA connector is Maxtor, but only on certain models. You may want to wait for Serial ATA comes down in cost and popularity goes up.

Use 80 pin IDE cables that are 18 inches or 45.72 cm in length. If you are able to buy round IDE cable. Get ones with shielding.