Got a wedge of IDE devices in my PC...

20GB HD - OS Boot (W2000 Pro SP2)
60GB HD - Data & Source

Asus 40x CD
TDK 24/10/40 CD-RW
Iomega 100MB ZIP IDE

Right, at the mo it's setup...

Mobo

Pri IDE - 20GB Master / 60GB Slave
Sec IDE - TDK Master

Promise ATA 100 IDE PCI Card

Pri - Asus
Sec - ZIP

I've got the Intel Application Accerlator drivers installed for the mobo IDE.

When I put a CD into the Asus, the PC seems to freeze for 1 to 2 seconds. I keep thinking to change the Asus CD from Master to Slave (or vice versa, I can't remember which it is set to now). Will this fix the pause?

Also, when trying to backup one of my CDs full of photo's, I struggle to sustain a 12x speed burn. Nero fills up the read buffer from the Asus but the TDK empties it and then has to stop to wait for more. Any suggestions to improve this? I've tried 24 speed and it just stops and starts quicker. All I can say is Burn Proof is :cool:

PC is Celeron 850 with 512MB PC133 on an Asus CUS-L2C i815 mobo.

TIA,

Chris.

You could try moving the TDK over to the Promise controller on the same channel as the Zip?

It might help having the two CD drives on the Promise.

Also check out the DMA settings for all your drives.

I would do the following, but 2K being 2K, you may be unlucky and need a reinstall to accomplish it properly, unless you like digging in the boot.ini....

I have built many machines now with multiple devices and Highpoint/Promise controllers since back in the day of the old BP6 machines.
IMO the 2 HD's would be far better off as Primary master and Secondary master on the Promise controller. Reason being that the performance should normally be just as good as on the standard ATA100 channels, but more importantly, 90% of the time CD-based drives perform far better on standard IDE controllers. I would have the CDROM as Primary master on the Intel Controller and the CDRW on the Secondary master. I would then try the ZIP drive on either Intel channel as a slave.
Hell, it may make no difference at all, but you never know.
In the bios, I would actually make sure that DMA is available if possible across the standard controller.
In 2K, go to the hardware tab in my computer properties and run the properties on the primary and secondary IDE controllers. Make sure that Use DMA if available is selected. If not, then alter them accordingly and reboot. DMA works perfectly on anything resembling an upto date machine and not once have I personally had to use anything other setting.
Cheers,

Nick :)

Cheers guys. A couple of comments...

I did have the Asus CD and the ZIP sharing a channel on the Promise PCI. When you fired the CD tray on the Asus, the PC would freeze for 4 or 5 seconds. Splitting them up reduced this down to around 1 second. Better but still annoying.

Boot.ini - no problem if it works right!

Chris

In the end this problem comes down to the fact that IDE uses the CPU as its brains and therefore any CD activety will slow the processor down. This is why high end systems (workstations and servers) use SCSI drives as they don't use anything like the system rescoures.

Jeff

That's the whole point of UDMA. On an up to date, well configured system, UDMA runs very well with not all that CPU usage at all. Not quite as low as SCSI, but still a lot lower than running without...

True

But CD/DVD/CDRs etc do have a nasty habit of bouncing even the faster processor to 100% for several seconds at a time...always liked SCSI drives (bl**dy expensive !)

Yup - I'd love a SCSI disk sub-system, I just struggle to justify the costs. Mind you, the basic entry level Dell & Compaq servers use IDE HDs these days. We've just put a new W2000 file server into a Mac / PC LAN for a design company and went for a RAID 1 120GB pair for file dumping. Would have been weel out their budget using SCSI drives.

I'll probably leave it as is until I get back from Catalunya in a couple of weeks - I won't have time to re-install W2000 if it goes tits-up this week.

Thanks,

Chris :)

[Edited by ChrisB - 3/10/2002 7:44:24 PM]