How to connect Harddisk,Zip drive, CDRW,DVDROM

[Merrvyn Tay]

Dear Friends,

1) My system runs on WinXp, in a new motherboard with 2 IDE connectors (IDE 1 & IDE 2).

2) I have the following IDE devcies:
a.Harddisk
b.Zip drive
c.CDRW
d.DVDROM

3) If I were to connect the IDE devices as follow, will it slow down my system?
IDE 1 -
harddisk(primary masters),
zip drive(primary slave)

IDE 2 -
CDRW(secondary masters),
DVDROM(secondary slave)

If not, please offer me some advice in coming up with a more ideal connection combination.


Thanks alot,
Merrvyn

[Yves Leclerc]

Depending how often you you your system, the DVD rom drive should be the secondary master and CD-RW should be slave.

How often would you use the ZIP drive?

Yves
"Merrvyn Tay" > wrote in message ...
Dear Friends,

1) My system runs on WinXp, in a new motherboard with 2 IDE connectors (IDE 1 & IDE 2).

2) I have the following IDE devcies:
a.Harddisk
b.Zip drive
c.CDRW
d.DVDROM

3) If I were to connect the IDE devices as follow, will it slow down my system?
IDE 1 -
harddisk(primary masters),
zip drive(primary slave)

IDE 2 -
CDRW(secondary masters),
DVDROM(secondary slave)

If not, please offer me some advice in coming up with a more ideal connection combination.


Thanks alot,
Merrvyn

[Merrvyn Tay]

Thanks for the info, Yves. I have more enquiries below.

May I know what is your rationale for making the DVD rom the secondary master, instead of the CDRW?

If I use the Zip more often than the CDRW, what should be the connection?
If I use the CDRW more than the Zip, what should be the connection?

If I have a motherboard that has additional IDEs(IDE 3 & IDE 4) for RAID puposes, can I connect the ZIP as a master drive in IDE 3 or IDE 4? Will the ZIP drive be detected in the RAID IDE connector?

Thanks alot,
Merrvyn
"Yves Leclerc" > wrote in message ...
Depending how often you you your system, the DVD rom drive should be the secondary master and CD-RW should be slave.

How often would you use the ZIP drive?

Yves
"Merrvyn Tay" > wrote in message ...
Dear Friends,

1) My system runs on WinXp, in a new motherboard with 2 IDE connectors (IDE 1 & IDE 2).

2) I have the following IDE devcies:
a.Harddisk
b.Zip drive
c.CDRW
d.DVDROM

3) If I were to connect the IDE devices as follow, will it slow down my system?
IDE 1 -
harddisk(primary masters),
zip drive(primary slave)

IDE 2 -
CDRW(secondary masters),
DVDROM(secondary slave)

If not, please offer me some advice in coming up with a more ideal connection combination.


Thanks alot,
Merrvyn

[D.Currie]

"Merrvyn Tay" > wrote in message ...
Thanks for the info, Yves. I have more enquiries below.

May I know what is your rationale for making the DVD rom the secondary master, instead of the CDRW?

If I use the Zip more often than the CDRW, what should be the connection?
If I use the CDRW more than the Zip, what should be the connection?

If I have a motherboard that has additional IDEs(IDE 3 & IDE 4) for RAID puposes, can I connect the ZIP as a master drive in IDE 3 or IDE 4? Will the ZIP drive be detected in the RAID IDE connector?

It depends on the motherboard an how it handles those connections. Some will function as extra ides for any device, some will only work with hard drives.

Thanks alot,
Merrvyn
"Yves Leclerc" > wrote in message ...
Depending how often you you your system, the DVD rom drive should be the secondary master and CD-RW should be slave.

How often would you use the ZIP drive?

Yves
"Merrvyn Tay" > wrote in message ...
Dear Friends,

1) My system runs on WinXp, in a new motherboard with 2 IDE connectors (IDE 1 & IDE 2).

2) I have the following IDE devcies:
a.Harddisk
b.Zip drive
c.CDRW
d.DVDROM

3) If I were to connect the IDE devices as follow, will it slow down my system?
IDE 1 -
harddisk(primary masters),
zip drive(primary slave)

IDE 2 -
CDRW(secondary masters),
DVDROM(secondary slave)

If not, please offer me some advice in coming up with a more ideal connection combination.


Thanks alot,
Merrvyn

[Yves Leclerc]

Sorry! I was away for a while.

DVD Rom should be secondary master since your may/would be accessing the drive to play CD/DVD (Data/Audio CD, Video/Data DVD) more often than the CD-RW d rive. Depending on your habit, I may think your would be burning CDs everyday. Also, depending on the age of the CD-RW and DVD drives, I could suspect that the DVD Rom may be newer than the CD-RW. Therefore, the DVD Rom drive's firmware may be more recent and most firmware flash program may prefer to have direct access to a "master drive".

ZIP Drive should remain primary slave since most ZIP drive will not (should not??) be used to boot the PC or XP.


As for the RAID ports, these should only be used for hard drives. Depending on the RAID hardware, some may come with another driver which could convert the ports into ATA133 ports.

New Lay out (if motherboard has RAID ports with ATA133 IDE port drivers):

RAID IDE 0 -- Hard drive one (ATA 133)
RAID IDE 1 -- ZIP (with ATA 133 driver installed on XP boot up)
IDE 0 -- DVD (a must for CD/DVD booting -- usually for other OS than Windows)
IDE 1 -- CD-RW ( backup to DVD boot)

Just make sure that your power supply unit should have extra drive power connectors and might need to be 350 watts or higher.

Yves
"Merrvyn Tay" > wrote in message ...
Thanks for the info, Yves. I have more enquiries below.

May I know what is your rationale for making the DVD rom the secondary master, instead of the CDRW?

If I use the Zip more often than the CDRW, what should be the connection?
If I use the CDRW more than the Zip, what should be the connection?

If I have a motherboard that has additional IDEs(IDE 3 & IDE 4) for RAID puposes, can I connect the ZIP as a master drive in IDE 3 or IDE 4? Will the ZIP drive be detected in the RAID IDE connector?

Thanks alot,
Merrvyn
"Yves Leclerc" > wrote in message ...
Depending how often you you your system, the DVD rom drive should be the secondary master and CD-RW should be slave.

How often would you use the ZIP drive?

Yves
"Merrvyn Tay" > wrote in message ...
Dear Friends,

1) My system runs on WinXp, in a new motherboard with 2 IDE connectors (IDE 1 & IDE 2).

2) I have the following IDE devcies:
a.Harddisk
b.Zip drive
c.CDRW
d.DVDROM

3) If I were to connect the IDE devices as follow, will it slow down my system?
IDE 1 -
harddisk(primary masters),
zip drive(primary slave)

IDE 2 -
CDRW(secondary masters),
DVDROM(secondary slave)

If not, please offer me some advice in coming up with a more ideal connection combination.


Thanks alot,
Merrvyn