On 4/15/06, Debbie Deutsch <fedoralist@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > Kam Leo wrote: > > > > 1. Are you using Cable Select? If yes, is the hard drive located at > > the end of the cable? > > > > I, personally, do not trust Cable Select. Not because Cable Select > > does not work, but because I do not trust mixing old with new. There > > old products around which do not fully comply with today's standards. > > On any drive on an IDE chain I make sure that jumpers are used to > > configure the master and slave device. I recommend that you do the > > same. > > > > 2. Move the optical drive to the secondary IDE channel. Make it the > > master. Yes, use a jumper. Any interference in operation between the > > hard drive and the optical will be removed and in the process you will > > improve the data transfer between the optical and hard drive. > > > > > > Hi Kam, > > Thanks for the suggestions. If memory serves, the drives are jumpered > as you suggest. In any case, they are both being correctly recognized > by the BIOS. The hard drive is at the end of the cable and is the > master; the optical drive is on the middle of the cable and is the > slave. The hard drive is 3 years old and supports cable select. The > barebones system and the optical drive are new. So, I suppose I could > change the jumpers, but I would be flabbergasted if they were the cause > of the problem. > > There is only one IDE connector on the mother board. (There are two > SATA connectors that are going unused, though.) Short of getting an IDE > controller and installing it on the PCI bus, I cannot put the optical > drive on a different IDE channel than the hard drive. OTOH, this system > does not have to be optimized for speed. It's just going to run some > servers for me. So, the optical drive will be used only rarely, and > then mostly for installing software. (Backups go to disks on a > different system.) > > Debbie > Only one IDE connector! And I thought my system was cheap. You really have an economy motherboard. Seriously, the sharing of that single bus does affect operation of all devices. Try turning off dma. If that solves your problem I recommend that you replace the hard drive with an SATA one.
