Best configuration for DVD/ROM and Burner 2

[sixstrings4]

I have 2 hard drives in my pc. My master is a 7200rpm and my slave is a 5600rpm drive. Right now I have the 7200rpm on its own 80 pin IDE cable. On my second cable 40 pin cable I currently have the 5600rpm drive along with a cd/rw. I've just purchased a DVD-ROM and a DVD-RW. I plan to remove the cd/rw but would like to know what is the best way to hook all these drives together. If I hook the 5600rpm drive on the same 80 pin cable with the 7200rpm drive, will that slow the 7200 rpm drive? Should I hook one of the DVD drives to the 80 pin cable? Also, the back of the DVD drives have a connection for a digital line...is this necessary?

 

[kiddpete]

Where will the data for the DVD-RW come from?

 

[tf1]

It is best to keep the DVD burner and the Data Source HDD on different IDE channels. This doesn't need to be the fasted disk because either disk is going to be much faster that the DVD!

I'd recommend keeping the system disk on IDE Chan A Master and put the DVD and other disk on IDE Channel B. Make sure to set up the options for the DVD burner software to cache data on the system disk.

Regards: tf1

 

[cdogg]

One important flaw in your setup is the secondary HDD. Even though it's only a 5600RPM, it needs to have access to either ATA/66 or ATA/100 which it's not getting on a 40-wire cable. The max speed a 40-wire cable will allow is ATA/33.

Placing it on the primary IDE channel will not slow down the faster 7200RPM drive at all. Only transfers between drives might be a bit slower.

Although it probably won't make much difference, I would change out the 40-pin cable for an 80-wire version. You never know when these optical drives will start requiring ATA/66.

The only exception to what I've suggested is if you plan on doing a lot of copying from DVD-ROM to DVD-RW. If so, then you want both on separate IDE channels. And in that case, you'll definitely want the 80-wire cable on the secondary to accomodate the HDD.


~cdogg
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[sixstrings4]

Thanks cdogg. You had some really good advice.