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Installing two hard drives which configuration is faster

Discussion in 'PC Hardware' started by Chris H, 2004/07/27.

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  1. 2004/07/27
    Chris H

    Chris H Inactive Thread Starter

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    I have two 160GB 8MB cache hard drives. Right now they are on the same IDE channel (IDE 0) as Master and Cable Select and they speed is pretty good when transferring from one drive to the other.

    If I put the other drive on IDE 1 and make it the Master will I see a speed boost?

    I wonder if it's faster for the data to come in on one channel and go out another or to come in one channel and back out the same one.
     
    Chris H,
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  2. 2004/07/28
    ReggieB

    ReggieB Inactive Alumni

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    Possibly, if it is the only drive on the secondary channel. However, I expect you'll want to put a CD/DVD drive somewhere (slave on the secondary?) and that will throw a spanner in the works. Basically, IDE works at the speed of the slowest device on the bus. So if you have a CD-ROM drive and a hard disk on the same channel, the hard drive will run at the same speed as the CD-ROM for significant periods of operation.

    Probably better to leave the system as it is.
     
    ReggieB,
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  4. 2004/07/28
    Christer

    Christer Geek Member Staff

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    In a DOS environment, that is certainly true. I have done some empirical tests and with mixed devices, creating Ghost Images (which is a DOS operation) takes conciderably longer (10-20% of the speed compared to non-mixed devices).

    Within Windows XP-pro, the benchmarks I did using AIDA32, showed no difference. The benchmarks were, however, not including transfer of data between two HDDs.

    Some people state that transfering data between HDDs on the same channel is faster than between two HDDs on different channels (both alone as master on the respective channel, ruling out the "mixing negatives "). The reason is said to be that transfering the data from one channel to another is slower than transfering the data within a channel.

    I have decided to separate the opticals from the HDDs for two reasons:
    1) I use Ghost under DOS
    2) I don't think that I would notice any difference under Windows XP-pro

    Christer
     
    Christer,
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  5. 2004/07/28
    ReggieB

    ReggieB Inactive Alumni

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    Thank you for the correction. Interesting.
     
    ReggieB,
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  6. 2004/07/28
    Christer

    Christer Geek Member Staff

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    ReggieB,
    You're welcome ...... :) ...... !

    When running under DOS, the Windows drivers for the motherboard (in my case VIA 4in1-drivers) are not loaded and the "old rule" is in effect.

    Under Windows, with the motherboard drivers loaded, the IDE channels can handle (do I dare say the word ...... :eek: ......) Independent Device Timing.

    Christer
     
    Christer,
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