ide and hard drive/cdrom drive positioning

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paluka

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I have built computers before and I knew the answer to this once but i wanted to ask someone else to make sure. When you have 2 hds 1 cdrom and 1 dvd rom is it better to cluster the hds together on one ide and the cd/dvds together or break em up and have a master hd and a cd/dvd rom per ide cable?
 
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The answer to that is simple. Any combination on the two ide channels surprisingly will work since you assign the boot device in the bios not be location on which cable. But the highest recommendation and most common practice is to see the primary and second HD on the primary ide cable with the 2 optical drives on the secondary.

When you look inside a prebuild system what do you see there? If ide the primary will be mastered on the first channel as a rule. But you can have a hard drive slaved to an optical on the secondary mainly as a storage device there without problems. That's how you can rescue files from a drive taken from another system as well. Master/Slave is the usual for 2 HDs however. In some cases the slave may have to be set to cable select in order for Windows to see it.
 
I've been running 2 ide HDs along with 2 optical drives(cd writer/dvd burner) for some time on more then one build. I just moved one ide HD along with a pair of satas into a new build and currently waiting for a replacement board to come in there. That now has a sata dvd burner to replace the ide model in this case since there's only one ide channel seen there and on many newer boards out.

You can easily mix drives around to see how the system there performs while the majority will point at slaving a second drive to the OS host drive on the primary channel and simply leaving the opticals on the secondary. The new build will see the first sata as the default boot device with XP and Vista on the single ide HD there. The second sata is mainly a storage drive but could see Vienna if a 3rd larger model is later added. You don't have jumper pins to worry about with sata drives.
 
I try to space my drives out in the bays so that the configuration with the cables works but also there can be air flow between drives instead of them sitting right on top of each other... I don't know how much of a difference it makes but its a personal preference.
 
If you only have two or three drives(HDs) there's no problem with that unless you are confined by drive cages. With the Aero Cool case here there are simple slide in and secure drive slots where you can space them easily. For the new Antec Nine Hundred model there are two 3 drive bays that slide out forward with a 120mm fan on each for cooling them as well as front intake.

The 3 drives(1 ide - 2 sata) were put in the top cage and surprisingly saw lower temps then spaced apart in the present model. And that's with a single 140mm in front. With that extra seen there you have to find what works the best for you there.
 
I have heard it's better to keep slower/faster drives together. IE hard drives on one channel, optical drives on another. I have yet to test this, but people say the speed of the channel is only as fast as the SLOWEST drive. I beg to differ, but I still typically try to separate everything.
 
Here a case will see the same make with one case seeing the older 5400rpm 120gb drive mixed with a newer 7200rpm 250gb model. The 250 became the primary while the 120 was used for 98 and Linux there. Despite the difference in drive speed both were on the primary ide cable without noticing any real performance loss.

Optical drives are still ATA33 there with no big difference noticed with a sata model on the new build here. Those are mostly kept on the secondary even while a single drive is often slaved to a single HD. That was seen on the old flat top desk models and more now on boards seeing only one ide channel.
 
If you guys help me remember, I'll see what interface the drives in my red desktop uses and will do a quick test using something like HD Tach this weekend to put this topic to rest :P Plus, my CD-burner in that system won't eject so I need to look into that :o
 
Sounds like it's time to get a new drive there. One reason why sata and SCSI are preferred on the old systems was for speeding up access to data stored on extra hard drives added onto a system. RAID allows for the ide type array of two drives there. As far as running 2 HDs both 7200rpm together you probably won't see a loss until mixing them with opticals not just putting one on the secondary.
 
New drive as in my burner? A CD had exploded in the drive sometime before I got the machine. I suspect a chunk is lodged in the gears somewhere.
 
OUCH alright! If you can get apart carefully a good look should show if something is stuck inside. If it was on a desktop you would have more room for that. I imagine that would be a little awkward for the portable there.
 
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