Simon C

My current system has 1 HHD and 1 DVD drive per ide channel, the HHD beign the master.

I've just got a new mobo to upgrade the system, and it advises against putting DVD/CD drives on the same IDE as a HHD.

Which way is best, this PC will not be used for gaming, just media work and internet / email.

Cheers
Simon

RB170

If you can always have your DVD/CD drives on a different channel to your HDD's

GaryScoobNCBR

Yep put them on a different channel as rb said

Simon C

Cheers guys, does it matter that the slave HHD will be smaller than the master? Master will be 40gb IDE 66 and the slave IDE100 120gb.

Kieran_Burns

iTrader: (1)

Always put the HDD on a separate channel as the optical drives majorly slow them down.

Oh, and always have the newest disk as the master drive, and (in this case) size doesn't matter

Simon C

Cheers guys. HDD and DVD drives on seperate channels it is.

Reason for asking about the IDE HHDs is I want to run the 120 for photo's and MP3's. That way they should be safe if I haven't backed up in the event of a termianl failure and you can't get many RAW's and Tiffs on a 40gb drive, let alone MP3's

jpor

iTrader: (1)

I would run the IDE 100 120GB as the Primarily Master and the 40GB IDE 66 as the secondary as the first one will run the fastest and allow quicker boot ups for Windows.

Kieran_Burns

iTrader: (1)

not necessarily true jpor - the channel will set itself to the speed of the lowest device - in this case the 66 40Gb drive.

Simon C

Thanks for your help guys. That was 1 of the easiest builds I've done. Windows didn't want to play to my plans last night, so ended up doing a fresh install 12 hours before I wanted to.

Windows didn't want to recognise my new HHD on this machine either, so I downloaded Western Digitals own HHD check setup. Turns out it wasn't formatted, but windows now sees it

Turns out my 40gb is ATA 100 as well, thought it was a 66, ah well.