ATA 100 HD Question

[Michael]

I had read that putting a udma 66 or 100 hd on an eide channel with another decice that runs slower will cause the hd drive to default to that lower speed also. However, I thought I also read that if the other device is a cdrom the hd will only default to the lower speed when that device (the cdrom) is being used. Is this correct? Here's what I want to do: Eide 1: Master: hd 7200/100 ultra ata; Slave 40x cdrom. Eide 2: Master: 2/4/6 cdwriter; Slave: hd 5200/33 udma.

This is exactly the configuration I've been using (2 hard drives in the above order) with no problems. The only difference now is that the Primary master is an ata 100 hd. TIA!

[Omletteboy]

If you are retrieving data from the ATA100 you will not see a decrease in speed. However transferring data from your ATA33 to your ATA100 drive will be defaulted to the ATA33 speed.

Your setup looks fine, keeping the cdrw and cdrom on separate channel is good for burning cd to cd to prevent buffer underruns.

[Michael]

Thanks! What about the cdrom, will that affect the ata 100 hd if say I'm playing music, etc, since they will be on the same channel?

[HAL9000]

What I usually do for my clients is slave the CD-RW to the Primary hard drive and put the CD-Rom as a Secondary master or Secondary slave to a hard drive. This way, when gaming, the CD-Rom is on a separate channel from the primary hard drive for maximum performance. The CD and CD-RW are on separate channels for reducing chances of a buffer underrun. As for writing from the primary hard drive to the CD-RW, don't sweat it, the hard drive is more than fast enough to keep up with the CD-RW even while master/slaved.

Better yet, for what little they cost, get a Promise Ultra66/100 controller and master everything in your system.