ATA 100 and 66 on same IDE channel?

[batjeep]

I have two ATA 66 HDs on my ABIT K7TE both 5400rpm Staples has a 20g 7200rpm (i think its ATA 100) for $56. So i give the 17gig i have to my dad, and he buys me the 20. Wahoo. What i want to know is, Is it ok to Have a 20g 7200 ATA100 as my primary master and a 30g 5400 ATA66 as a primary slave on IDE 1. I have a DVD drive (UDMA33) and a CD-RW (PIO 4) on IDE2. (btw which cd drive should be master and which should be slave.)
thanks for your help
batjeep

[dragonB]

That will work fine.
The ata100 drive will actually run at ata66, but who cares.
The hard drive can't even go as fast as ata66 anyway, so it won't affect performance in the least.
dragonB

[batjeep]

Oh well i just checked the SKU and found out that its a 20g Maxtor 7200rpm DiamondMax Plus, w/ 2 mb of cache it's only an ATA 66 but that wasnt a huge selling point for me anyway cause of the minimal gain. but it would be nice to upgrade my maxtor 18g 5400 with the 20g 7200 and it will only cost my dad $59 so its all good. any suggestions on my CDroms though i used to have the burner as master and then i switched the dvd to the master cause it was UDMA 33 but now i cant burn cause of "an unspecified error" so i think ill put it back i dunno any input?

[solo-pc-tech]

Do yourself a favor and get a Promise Ultra66 IDE card. $20 at Newegg.com. Put the hard drives on it and the CDs on the mainboard controller. Every device will be master on its own IDE channel. You should get a noticeable performance increase. Just set the BIOS to boot from SCSI.

[AuraEdge]

--Edit--

Chain = IDE channel in this post. I just realized I said chain alot and thats not the proper wordage.

--/edit---

Actually I tested ATA/100 and ATA/66 on the same ATA/100 chain, and the ATA/100 doesnt slow down. I also tryed the ATA/100 on the same chain as an ATA/33 device, and it also did not slow down. Lastly, I tryed ATA/100 and PIO4 drive on the same chain, and still didnt slow down.

I explained this experiment of mine on this forum somewhere, but I'm not quite sure of the location of that post.

With the DVD drive and the CD-RW drive on the same chain, you may have some Writing cache problems with copying from the DVD drive to the CD-RW, because IDE can only read one device on each chain at a time. No simultaneous reading/writings unless they are on different chains. So Solo-pc-tech's suggestion is valid. It will speed up Harddrive to harddrive transfers and DVD to CD-RW transfers for you. Additionally, you will have connections for 4 more IDE devices. You cant put any more right now.

If you decide not to get this, then you should have the CD-RW as the master on the second chain. Master always gets priority over the slave when both have requests at the same time (I think), so its better to let the CD-RW have priority, since it has more critical writing. If the DVD skips a second of reading, you dont burn a coaster.

[NDC]

I know what you mean dragonb & Aura...

I've read in UDMA specifications that each hard drive will run at its own UDMA mode regardless of the combination it's connected. However, that hasn't been the case for me on several mainboards. When adding a lower UMDA HDD with a higher UDMA HDD. Just like memory, it drops down to the slower speed.

[batjeep]

Hmmmm more than interesting. Actually the second HD i got was actually one that my neighbor found in a trashed PC in my dorm a couple years ago (its been flawless, the person also trashed a 300mhz cpu and a working Voodoo3, and 2 years ago that person was just plain stupid to do this. the only thing he kept was the ram.) any way the HD from that was attatched to a Promise ATA66 card which i took too so hmmmmmm where can i get drivers and some help on how to do this. its probably easy enough but id like some back up cause i have no documentation. Thanks youve all been a great help. I didnt get the HD at staples it sold out like a minn before i got there but i think ill get the IBM 60GXP thanks

[Ziz]

So, by the same logic, a 33 drive will work fine on a 66 controller? I have an old Maxtor 8 gig that I need to transplant to a new machine. Tried putting it on the standard IDE channels and the machine didn't like it. Will it still work OK if I put it on the 66 channel?

[PrimalX]

solo-pc-tech
By adding the Promise Ultra66 IDE to my current system, am I gonna get 4 IDE channels ?

[PrimalX]

solo-pc-tech
By adding the Promise Ultra66 IDE to my current system, am I gonna get 4 IDE channels ?

BTW, I found the controler for $35CAN at my local computer store but it comes as an OEM product. Do I need a driver for it?

[PrimalX]

solo-pc-tech
By adding the Promise Ultra66 IDE to my current system, am I gonna get 4 IDE channels ?

BTW, I found the controler for $35CAN at my local computer store but it comes as an OEM product. Do I need a driver for it?

[PrimalX]

Darn computer.. sorry about this guys, my connection seems to freeze so I kept on clicking Submit Reply button. This is the end result.

Again, sorry.

[NDC]

Yes, by adding a PCI IDE controller, you will be able to use the 2 IDE channels that are on tha mainboard and 2 additonal IDE channels on the PCI hard disk controller. You'll be able to connect up to 8 IDE devices.

[solo-pc-tech]

Windows Me has a built-in driver for the Promise Ultra66. If you put your boot drive on the Promise card, you will need to change the boot order to SCSI first in the BIOS.

Promise web page, http://www.promise.com/.