Mixing HDD and DVD on the same IDE channel.

[laserblazer]

I've always been led to believe that this is not a good idea as the optical drives drags down the performance of the HDD. I'm putting together a new video editor and don't want to lose my 320GB IDE drive. I can't find a suitable MOBO with two IDE channels. I want a separate drive for the data and thought to get a 500GB SATA drive for the data and use the 320GB IDE for OS and applications.

 

If my DVD burner is on the same IDE channel as the 320GB HDD is this going to be a problem. If I'm burning disks the data will be transferred from the SATA drive.

[steveg]

This shouldn't really be a problem, only thing to check for is with the dvd burner software make sure it doesn't cache the files to the system drive before burning.

 

Do you already own the DVD burner? A new sata dvd burner is £16 on ebuyer, would leave the ide channel free for the hard disk.

 

Steve

[dhicks]

I've always been led to believe that this is not a good idea as the optical drives drags down the performance of the HDD.

 

Well, the harddrive and the DVD drive will share a data bus, so if both want to operate at the same time (i.e. if you're copying stuff from the HDD to the DVD) then you'll see a performance drop.

 

As pointed out, eBay is probably the place to go - a two-channel IDE controller is around £10.

 

--

David Hicks

[DMcCoy]

the bus will also run at the speed of the slowest device, so the hdd might be udma 5, the dvd will probably be alot slower, multi word dma 2 or something

[laserblazer]

I think Steve has offered the magic solution and I've added a SATA dvd burner to the order.

[Michael]

Alternatively you could also buy an IDE to SATA converter which are easy to find

[TornUp]

i never like mixing devices on a IDE if i can. infact. IF i got to use IDE. i don't like putting any more then 1 device per a channel.

 

hurray for SATA though!