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Thread: best way to connect up two hdds and dvd

  1. #1
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    best way to connect up two hdds and dvd

    i have my main 80GB hard drive, which is 7200 rpm, an old 20GB 5400 rpm drive and a DVD-ROM/CD-RW drive. all are IDE. i have two of the faster IDE cables (with lots of thin wires rather than fewer fat ones). i'm wondering about the best way to configure them. at present i have the two hard drives as master and slave on the primary IDE channel and the cd drive on its own on the other channel. but would it be better to do it another way?

    also which hard drive should i put virtual memory on (if you can in fact choose where it's put), and which should i put my photoshop swap file on?

    i have winows xp professional.

    thanks

  2. #2
    Banned Johnny Fist's Avatar
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    I'd but the old 5400 on the same ribbon as the cd burner since it'll cause the 7200 to slow down if they're on the same one. I'd put the page file, as its called in XP, on the 7200 rpm drive. Use the 7200 rpm drive for your operating systems and software and use the 5400 rpm drive to hold backups, data, etc.

  3. #3
    Ultimate Member bassman's Avatar
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    Re: best way to connect up two hdds and dvd

    Originally posted by tremendous
    iat present i have the two hard drives as master and slave on the primary IDE channel and the cd drive on its own on the other channel.
    My advise: keep it that way. IDE drives on the same channel can't operate at the same time (for example, you can't successfully read from a hard drive and write it on a CD "on the fly" - first the reading takes place, then the writing goes on, the two drives take turns). So, to guarantee that burning CDs is successful and fast, keep the burner out of the source's channel.
    also which hard drive should i put virtual memory on (if you can in fact choose where it's put), and which should i put my photoshop swap file on?
    Put the swap file on the fastest drive (probably the 7200RPM) - right click My Computer, select Properties -> Advanced tab -> press Performance Options -> press Change on the Virtual Memory area -> select the target drive and swap file size on the next screen

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    Ultimate Member bassman's Avatar
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    Originally posted by Johnny Fist
    I'd but the old 5400 on the same ribbon as the cd burner since it'll cause the 7200 to slow down if they're on the same one
    That's a myth, you'll only notice lack of performance if you use them like I stated above

  5. #5
    Ultimate Member Baddog's Avatar
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    DVD = Master
    Improvise - Adapt - Overcome
    SafeSearch is off

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    two contraditing answers... what could be worse? (and one seemingly meaningless)

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    Ultimate Member Strawbs's Avatar
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    OK! here's the real config!

    Put the 7200 on it's own as Primary drive with the minimum page file fixed at "2 - 2", Put the DVD + 5400 on second channel w\ DVD as master, Format 5400 as NTFS & create a 2GB partition for a fixed (1.8GB) swap file to prevent fragmentation, leave the 0.2GB free to stop XP moaning about lack of disk space.

    I read (somewhere) that if you want to move the swap file you should put it on a different "drive" completely for it to be effective. Using a different partition on the primary drive will actually slow its operation.

    Whatever you choose to do - you should use a fixed size to prevent fragging.


  8. #8
    Ultimate Member bassman's Avatar
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    Originally posted by tremendous
    two contraditing answers... what could be worse? (and one seemingly meaningless)
    Is that a question?

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    if you want it to be. i just don't see how dvd = master is helpful. but if you're asking if "could there be anything worse" is rhetorical, yes it is.

    will having the windows virtual memory on the 5400 drive slow my computer down? that was what i was worried about. it's having it on a seperate drive to windows, which i have heard is better, versus having it on a quicker drive... i'm still not completely convinced. it's easy to partition my 20GB drive, it's empty. it's already NTFS though.

    but johnny fist seems to agree with what strawbs said - putting the 5400 on a seperate ribbon to the 7200 - but then bassman says to keep them on the same one. i don't know whose advice to follow.

    and thanks everybody.

  10. #10
    Ultimate Member bassman's Avatar
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    I didn't expressly said you have to keep them on the same channel, my advise was for you to analyze your situation and, given the information I tried to expose, choose the best configuration for your case. If you plan on recording stuff from both drives they shouldn't be on the same channel as the optical recorder or you will get a quite noticeble performance loss (and if it wasn't for buffer underrun protections, you'd ruin some CDs) because of the limitations on the IDE bus (and these are documented, see the standard)

  11. #11
    Ultimate Member Imperion1's Avatar
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    Primary Master: HDD 7200rpm
    Primary Slave: Cdrom

    Secondary Master: DVD-RW (DVD burner)
    Secondary Slave: HDD 5200+

  12. #12
    Ultimate Member Imperion1's Avatar
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    Better yet, what motherboard do you have? System specs would have been helpful.

    If your motherboard has 4 IDEs, then set each device on its own IDE. If it only has 2 IDEs, you can always buy a PCI to IDE card. Then you can still have each device on its own IDE. The DVD-burner and the HDD 5200rpm would go on the IDE card.

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    it's an ASUS A7N8X-X motherboard. two IDE buses.
    i figure i will be recording to CD (i don't have a DVD burner - just one optical drive) from both HDDs, so i suppose i'll leave it as it is. i'll look into PCI IDE cards though. thanks everybody. as performance suffers when accessing both drives on the same bus at the same time it makes sense to have my swap files on the primary drive, so that's solved too. thanks again.

  14. #14
    Ultimate Member Imperion1's Avatar
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    Ah yes, I read your DVD-rom / cd-rw incorrectly.

    Well then, leave the Primary Slave empty. And where I had DVD-burner, make that your cd-rw.

  15. #15
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    but i'll be recording to CD from both hard drives. bassman says having the CDRW on the same bus as a source drive makes problems.

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