IDE SETUP with Drives - Plz Help!

[PCGuy760]

I am a bit confused how I should set up my Drives on a new PC I am building. I have an ECS K7VZA Motherboard, which has :

1x UMDA100 IDE Port (2 devices)
1x UDMA33-66 IDE Port (2 devices)

I have the following drives that need to be setup, but I am not sure which should be master, slave, primary or secondary???

Maxtor DiamondMax 40Gb ATA100 HDD
Liteon 16x10x40 CD Writer
Buslink 52x CD ROM
Pioneer 10x DVD ROM

Please tell me which is the best setup. Remember I have two UDMA 100 and two UDMA33-66.

Thanks in advance!

[Inanis]

Looks like you are kinda screwed there, those CD ROM drives will not run at UDMA100, and because you are going to have to put one on the same cable as the HD, its gonna slow down the HD . .. :P

I would put the HD on UDMA100 Master, the CD-ROM on UDMA100 Slave.

Put CD-RW on UDMA33/66 Master, and DVD on UDMA33/66 Slave.

Remember to turn on DMA in the device manager for each device if you are running windows 9x!

[otheos]

Erm, that's a bit of an impossible

Your motherboard will (and does) have 2 identical IDE connectors.

In the case of the K7VZA, which is based on the VIA VT82C686A Southbridge, it means the two channels (two devices each) are ATA66 capable and backwards compatible with all previous standards.

Personally I'd drop the Buslink CDROM, as it has no purpose. The DVD and Burner can both do its job. So I'd put the hard drive and DVD on the primary and CDRW on the Secondary.

As long as devices on the same channel support DMA each will operate at its max. However if one of them is only PIO capable then the whole channel is limited to PIO.

If you want to hold on to the CDROM, make it Sec Slave to the CDRW.

[PCGuy760]

Unfortunately, I am still waiting on my Graphics Card for my system, so I cannot tell you guys which configuration worked best, but do yall think that I should just try different configurations and Benchmark all the drives with something like say, Sisoft Sandra or CD Speed until I discover which is optimum???

Oh yes, I do want to keep the CD ROM cos I dont want to wear out my DVD or CDRW from playing Music CDs or VideoCDs. Hence, I want to use the DVD for DVDs and CDRW for burning. Do you guys think that is strange of me??!

Thanks for all the replies thus far!

[otheos]

Wear them? Do you intend to keep them for 20 years lol?

Don't worry about it, you bought them to use them, and by the time they're worn out they will be obsolete anyway.

I think a look here may be of help to you.

[PCGuy760]

lol Mainly because I do ALOT of Audio CD Ripping and now I plan to do DVD Ripping also, so thats why I do not want to use my CDRW to read Audio - Just write.

I read that its not good to put the CDRom and CDWriter on the same channel cos it reduces the write speed???

I still think the best way is to benchmark the drives with different configurations. Oh well, I got to wait for now.

:o

[SickPup404]

I agree about dropping the CD-ROM...

-OR-

You could buy a cheap IDE (less than $25) card to run the CD-ROM on a third channel. I keep only HD's on the same channel. (I have Maxtor 40gig+IBM 40gig mirrored on RAID channel master/slave, Plextor CD-RW primary master, Creative DVD primary slave, Yamaha CD-RW secondary master, Panasonic secondary slave)

[PCGuy760]

I was actually thinking about wether a PCI IDE Card would work but then I was wondering if the Motherboard will allow me to have more than 4 IDE Devices ie : 4 on the onboard IDE and one (the HDD) on the IDE Card.

I am really considering that option since I dont want to lose my CD ROM and almost everyone agrees that my HDD performance will drop if I hook it up with a CD Drive or anything that is not UDMA100.

What kind of IDE Card u suggest - a ATA100 PCI IDE?. So will the PC be able to have 6 IDE Devices now since two more will be able to go on the card???

Thx for replying!

[SickPup404]

You can have up to four IDE channels, each with 2 devices for a total of 8 drives. If your M/B supports ATA100, and you only have the single ATA100 device, I think there's no need to get the ATA100 controller unless the cost difference is negligible. Stick to a decent brand (i.e Siig, Promise, Maxtor even sells them)

Just a quick check at buy.com shows the following starts around $20 (sorted by price ascending)
http://www.us.buy.com/retail/subcat....=price&filter=

[PCGuy760]

Thanks! I think its worth the $34 is costs here in IL, considering that I might want to put in another HDD or so later on, so yeah, I think I will get the ATA100 PCI Card. Thanks!

[SickPup404]

No problem. Good luck with it!