hard drive-cd burner

[dhsrcjh]

I have a compaq computer. I want to add a cd burner and a hard drive. There is a dvd-cd-wr in it now. The cd is on one cable and the hard drive on another cable. Can I add the other burner on the same cable as the first burner? Also, how about the hard drive? The hard drive that I want to add has all my records on it. It is from the computer that the mother board went out on.
I have an AMD 2600, 256 DDR ram, 80g hard drive, 17" flat monitor. Also, where would be the best place to get another stick of ram. It has 1 stick of DDR that is 256.

 

[Blueman]

Good news is that most systems will support up to 4 IDE devices. You already have 2 ( HDD and CDROM) and you are adding 2 more (HDD2 and CDROM2)

The biggest issue you have to deal with is cable length. What matters the most in adding drives is what will the cables actually reach to and plug into. The most important thing you need to remember is that you place your Operating System Drive on the Primary IDE Master Setting.

This being said it is important to inform you that each IDE channel has a master and a slave. For each drive being added you must make sure it is not set to conflict with the other drive on the IDE chain. If the existing drive is set for slave, then the new drive installed on the same IDE channel must be in the master setting.

Now, as to the optimum way to install your drives for the fastest use I've heard many schools of thought. Really I believe it comes down to your IDE controllers and the cables being used. If you only have IDE controllers that support ATA 66 max then you can put the devices any which way you choose barring the Operating system drive.

Now I've heard that ATA100/133 should be used for your hard drives only, as placing a cdrom (ATA 33 speeds only!) will slow the bus down to the slowest speeds- not sure if thats entirely acurate or not.

Some would also argue that by placing both HDD on one cable, and cdrom's on another will slow your system down if you are doing a cd to cd direct copy, or a hdd to hdd write. This is due to both IDE devices accessing the same IDE buss to read and write.

So if you only have ATA 33 /66 controllers, then mix up the devices, since the cdroms will not slow any speeds down. If you have a ata 100/133 controller then you might want to put both IDe drives onto that controller and the cdrom's to the other.

The other option is to buy a PCI IDE controller for your HDd's and then put the Cdroms on the MTB IDE.

WEEEHHHHHHHHh! way too long of a post! SOrry bout that guys

 

[ekÆsine]

i just want to add that compaq is notoriously cheap. your IDE ribbon cables may or may not have the connector in the middle to connect to a slave drive. in that case you will have to buy a new cable.

the placement you put a device on an IDE cable, in my experience, isn't too important. on modern cd to cd copy with both cd burners on the same IDE channel won't slow anything down by much. maybe that was true when burners were 24x and under.

what's curious is, think of it this way: why do many people who have 2 hard drives put them on the same IDE channel? that should degrade performance like cd-to-cd copy. makes no sense to me either.

putting a cd-rom and a hard disk on the same controller will degrade performance by such a tiny amount it isn't noticeable. so my advice is you can put it anywhere, for me i orangnize them by type. all hard drives are on one cable and all optical cd/ dvd drives on another drive.

if you decide to put a hard disk on the same cable as a cd/ dvd drive you must make sure the cable is an 80 wire IDE cable. theres only 2 kinds the 80 and the 40 wire. the 40 wire is fatter than the 80 wire.

 

[Apokalipse]

ive heard that if you have a hard drive and CD burner on 1 channel it will actually degrade burning performance, if you have a CD to CD on 1 IDE channel it isn't really important about speed, you will not likely notice any speed loss since you only usually use 1 CD drive at a time.

 

[dhsrcjh]

Both of the cables have dual hookups on them. In order for them to reach, I will have to put both cd roms together and both hard drives together. I was just wondering if they would work that way. In my older computer, they would not work. I had to put a cd rom and a hard drive on each cable.
Does everyone agree that they will work with the 2 hard drives and one cable and the 2 cd roms on the other cable???????????????