Dotan Cohen wrote: > On 29/08/2007, Mikkel L. Ellertson <mikkel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: >> One other thing to think about - if you do not have optical drives, >> or if you have fast access optical drives, it can be beneficial to >> have each hard drive on its own controller. Unless you are stuck >> with one of the controller that does not allow access to both IDE >> interfaces at the same time, or does not support fast access on both >> interfaces, it can speed up overall disk access. This is especially >> true when copying or moving data between drives. >> >> Mikkel > > Are you suggesting that for a situation with 2 IDE interfaces on the > motherboard, two optical drives and two hard drives that each IDE > interface have one each hard drive and optical drive? That seems to me > would slow down the optical drives, which are faster than the hard > drives, as the IDE interface would run at the speed of the slowest > device on the interface. > > Dotan Cohen > In my experience, optical drives tend to be slower then hard drives, not faster. But the important part are the data transfer rate, the IDE chipset, and what you are accessing. If the hard drive and optical drive both have the same max transfer speed, or the interface can use different rates for each device, then it can be an advantage because most system do more hard drive access then optical drive access. (Take a look at the DMA modes supported by the better double layer DVD drives...) As long as the optical drives do not force a slower transfer rate for both devices on the cable, and you do not do a lot of reading/writing to/from the optical drive, it can speed up hard drive access. (Not the timing reported by hdparm, but real world access when accessing both drives at once.) There are a few things to watch out for: Writing data to an optical drive on the same interface as the drive the data is coming from may be a problem, especially if the optical drive has a small buffer. Connecting a slower transfer speed optical drive with a fast hard drive when the interface does not support different speeds for different devices. Cases where you have heavy optical drive access. Broken IDE chipsets that do not support data transfer on both IDE interfaces at the same time. You have to know your hardware, and your usage, to know if this configuration will be helpful to you. Even when you only have 2 hard drives, and no optical drives, it will not help if you have to serialize command to the IDE interface, or if the second interface does not support the faster transfer rates that the drives do. Then again, if you are using SATA drives, none of this applies anyway. Mikkel -- Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons, for thou art crunchy and taste good with Ketchup!
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