IDE Cable question

[TheMajor]

You can use either Master or Slave for CD-ROM or HDD if they are both on the same cable. Doesn't matter. If you only have 1 device on a cable it should be set to Master and connected to the end of the cable, although it will mostly work fine when connected to the middle connector.

 

[Dngrsone]

You can use either Master or Slave for CD-ROM or HDD if they are both on the same cable. Doesn't matter. If you only have 1 device on a cable it should be set to Master and connected to the end of the cable, although it will mostly work fine when connected to the middle connector.

Your statement is ambiguous, Major.

Say, rather, when placing two devices on an IDE channel, either one or the other can be set as Master, as long as the other is set to Slave.

 

[HAVOC]

ok.

Why put a CD/DVD ROM on the Primary IDE controller as a master? That just doesn't make any sense what so ever. During post the BIOS looks for the first (Boot) Device on the primary IDE channel. So if a CD/DVD ROM is the on the primary as master, you're BIO's will see that first and move on to the next which will be you're HDD which is you're (FIRST BOOT) device. Now, granted.. this might delay the boot a fraction of a second, but still... why? Just because you can?

I can hook up my Plasma HDTV to my progressive scan DVD player with a set of RCA cables and sure it will work. But, I also have Component Video Cables as well. So... why not use the best of the two???

 

[Dngrsone]

Why put a CD/DVD ROM on the Primary IDE controller as a master? That just doesn't make any sense what so ever. During post the BIOS looks for the first (Boot) Device on the primary IDE channel. So if a CD/DVD ROM is the on the primary as master, you're BIO's will see that first and move on to the next which will be you're HDD which is you're (FIRST BOOT) device. Now, granted.. this might delay the boot a fraction of a second, but still... why? Just because you can?

If you want a plausible example, then how about this-- I have a firewall that boots off of a CDROM. The hard drive is a smaller size split between swap and a partition specifically for logs.

I set the CDROM drive as Master because it is the boot drive, the HDD is just the swap partition and logs dump.

 

[HAVOC]

Plausible answer it is. But, not practical for 99.9% of Desktop users.

 

[TheMajor]

Your statement is ambiguous, Major.

Say, rather, when placing two devices on an IDE channel, either one or the other can be set as Master, as long as the other is set to Slave.

Yes, thanks, that's what I meant.

You can also boot from slave devices BTW. So it really doesn't matter, all you would have to do is change a BIOS setting to boot fromt he correct device.
This can be useful if you have an old drive wich is set to slave and you do not have a manual or anything to set it to master.

 

[doodle dee]

we know that you can connect both to one channel, but i think the real question is when you have a HD and a optical drive, on the same channel, will it decrease performance/bandwidth? Like Havok says, why not just use both channels on the board. Is it true that the HD will run slower since its on the same channel as the optical drive?

 

[TheMajor]

Probably a bit slower when transferring from CD-ROM to HDD on same channel. Same with 2 HDD's on 1 channel.

 

[Dngrsone]

I ran a drive performance utility on my computer and looked at the performance of my HDD with and without the CDROM attached to the bus and there was no difference.

I will look for some more utilities and see if this behavior can be replicated in others.

 

[Juice Daddy]

HA!!