What sequence to connect 4 devices on ide

[Harold]

Hi there,

I bought myself a cd-writer and a new hd. So now I've got 4 devices. What is the best way of connecting them to my ide-slots. I now have a hd IBM 3.6 e-ide, a WD 3.2 udma, a A-open 40X udma (dma forced) and a Philips cdd3610 cd writer. I hope you can help me because windows sometimes waits a view seconds when starting explorer.
Thanks in advance Harold

[kwai]

whoa, full house eh? you're probably beginning to understand why some guys like scsi when you try stretching those ide cables around.

if i were you, i would put the (newer?) wd as primary master, aopen cd as primary slave. i'd try to see if you could get the phillips as secondary master, ibm secondary slave, but if that doesn't work, try the reverse.

explorer might take a few seconds when starting if the last window that was open when you last quit was for a cd or floppy drive (then it has to go seek it to see if the contents are still the same).

if its taking REALLY long to open explorer, check out the "seven seconds to explorer" thread.

[Sky]

Wouldn't it be better to have the WD as master on IDE 1 and the second HD as slave on IDE 1. The aopen as master on IDE2 and the writer as slave. then you could access both the WD and Aopen CD without experiencing access down time between the two. You'd then be able to read/write to the cd writer from the WD or IBM much faster. This is based on the fact that you can't access 2 different devices on the same IDE channel at the same time. the faster drives should be the primary drives on both IDE

[kwai]

that's true, but i was thinking that would be the ideal setup if harold was copying a cd on -the-fly from on cd drive to the other. if he first made an image of the cd on his hard drive (either) then the problem of simultaneous channel access is not such a big deal since the hd's are much faster and they also have buffers.

in either case, the cd writer should be the master since its priority is more critical when burning a cd. again, if you first make an image to the hd, its not so important.