master and slave, hows it work

[scott123]

so yeh, im wondering just how it works exactly. im planning on having a cd rom/dvd rom, cd-rw drive, and two hard drives. so how would i wanna set it up.

[HAL9000]

Simple enough, I would probably just put the two hard drives on one channel. If your motherboard supports ATA66/100/133, use an 80 wire ATA cable and set both hard drives to cable select. Whatever drive you want to have as your C:\ drive, place it at the end of the cable. The second drive will be in the middle position, and the blue connector will go to the motherboard. As for the DVD and CDRW (I'm assuming that's what you meant and that you didn't need a CD-Rom in there as well as it's kinda pointless), it really doesn't matter which is the master and which is the slave, but you have to have one of each, you can't have both as masters or both as slaves.

[Airmack]

Well my cd rom is master, cdrw is slave, HDD is master.

bios boot up is set to floppy, cdrom, hdd0

[Markoman01027]

Here is what you want to do. Your motherboard comes with two IDE channels. IDE 1(The first IDE channel) supports Ultra udma(aka ultra ata) . I don't know your specs of the hard drives, but for MASTER on IDE 1, you want to plug in the highest capacity/highest RPM hard drive, so it can take advantage of the ultra udma protocol transfer speeds. For your second hard drive, you want to make it as SLAVE, because it will NOT use ultra ata 100, but it will use ATA 33/66.
Now, with the CD-ROM/dvd-rom and cd-rw. An IDE channel can only support two IDE devices. Since you will have 3 ATAPI devices, you will not be able to hook all of them up. That is why it is just best to buy a Cd-ROM/CD-RW combo. BUT if you want to do that, you can get a PCI ATA controller, put it into your PCI Slot, and then take the hard drive cable and plug it in there, meaning you will have an IDE channel open. So then when the IDE channel is open, you can plug in the DVD-ROM in there, and to avoid data interference and loss of speed, you can put the cd-rom and cd-rw on the other ide channel. But here is an overview:

Here is an example. Lets say you had these two hard drives:

IDE 1 :
Master: 60GB Western Digital 7200 RPMS
SLAVE: 20GB Maxtor 5200RPMS

IDE 2:
MASTER: DVD-ROM/CD-ROM COMBO drive
SLAVE: CD-RW drive

in that case if you had that PCI ATA 100 Controller card

Controller Card IDE 1 : Master: 60GB Hard Drive
Controller card IDE 1: Slave: 20GB hard drive
IDE 1: MASTER: DVD
IDE 2: SLAVE: CD-ROM, CD-RW

I hope you can understand this, I tried to explain it the best way I can. But here is another quick run down. An IDE channel can only support two IDE devices, so if you want to add more, you will need to get a PCI ATA controller card, but as a general rule, for IDE 1, you ONLY want to plug in hard drives, because IDE 1 will have ultra udma support, and IDE 2 usually only is good for ATAPI devices(cd-rom, etc)
But with the PCI ATA 100 Controller card, you can put in the two hard drives, and I believe that if you plug in the DVD-ROM into the IDE 1 channel on the board, I think it will use the best speed as possible. But it would be just wise to just get a DVD-ROM/CD combo, and then just get a CD-RW drive.

But here is a question that you should ask a professional about, because I am only 50% on this. From what I have been reading, the IDE 1 channel is specifically used for storage devices, as it will uitilize high transfer speeds that cd-roms, dvd-roms cannot handle. So what I want you to do, is ask a professional if you plug in a dvd-rom, etc into ide 1 and will it still give you good transfer speeds. also ask if there will be any performance loss because IDE 1 is specifically used to utilize hard drive transfer speeds.

if I am wrong anybody, please correct me. But I Have never really thought about adding more than 5 devices to my system, as it would slow down performance and just put work on my computer.

Thanks and I hope this information is easy to understand and helpful for you. Like I said, I tried to be as clear as possible

-Matt

[Markoman01027]

HAL, answer this question for me, if you can. IDE 1 is generally used for Hard drives because of the high transfer speeds. IF I would plug a dvd-rom or even a cd-rom into the ide 1 channel, would there be any conflicts? performance loss?

-Matt

[HAL9000]

No, it would work fine there as well.

[Markoman01027]

Yeah thats what I thought, it would just use the best transfer protocol. But I wasn't too sure.

Thanks HAL

-Matt

[scott123]

markoman, all in all there will be 5 things, a cd/dvd combo (for watching dvds and using cdroms) and cd-rw (for making and copying cds) a 40gb drive, a 80gb drive (for editing), and a floppy drive.

im not gonna have a cd drive, a dvd drive, and a cd-rw. that would just be dumb and pointless in my opinion. but i like having two drives just cause it makes copying cds really simple, and im used to it on this computer. but thanks for all of the good info.

[glc]

Here is what you want to do. Your motherboard comes with two IDE channels. IDE 1(The first IDE channel) supports Ultra udma(aka ultra ata) . I don't know your specs of the hard drives, but for MASTER on IDE 1, you want to plug in the highest capacity/highest RPM hard drive, so it can take advantage of the ultra udma protocol transfer speeds. For your second hard drive, you want to make it as SLAVE, because it will NOT use ultra ata 100, but it will use ATA 33/ 66.

NOPE. Both drives will run at their rated speeds or the speed of the controller, whichever is less, as long as you use a properly configured Ultra ATA 80 wire cable if the drive and the controller supports ATA66 or higher. This applies to ALL controllers, not just IDE1.