Master Slave Question

[IEatHardDrives]

Ok im building a computer with an SATA hard drive and I have a combo drive with the IDE cable should I hook the combo drive as master or slave or does it matter?

[CataclysmCow]

What is a combo drive? Do you mean an optical drive?

The SATA makes no difference to the ATA chain, but if you only have one device on an ATA chain you'll want to put it at the end of the chain as "master" so you get proper termination.

Edited October 2, 2005 by CataclysmCow

[cherokeechief]

What is a combo drive?  Do you mean an optical drive?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

a combo drive is a CD drive that has both a CD-RW and a DVD as one. it will burn CDs, and play DVDs.

that is what a combo drive is.

most laptops come with combo drives. also there are internal burners with dvd players for towers.

[xxkbxx]

yeah, just hook up the combo drive as master on it's own IDE cable - something you should do even if you have 1 ATA hard drive and 1 Optical drive - if you put the two on the same ATA ribbon cable you will run your hard drive at a CD drive speed

[CataclysmCow]

if you put the two on the same ATA ribbon cable you will run your hard drive at a CD drive speed

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

No it won't.

Edited October 3, 2005 by CataclysmCow

[iccaros]

if you put the two on the same ATA ribbon cable you will run your hard drive at a CD drive speed

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

No it won't.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

ah.. yes.. well it used to be..

the ATA standard is to split the channel to talk to both devices at the same speed. and as is the case with 802.11 will only talk at the slowest speed. it has to do with timing and message quing.

With the invention of PMO the system could talk using independent device timing, adn now DMA the Drive does not have to talk at all to the CPU to write to memory.

but you are limited at to what you can do .. IE if you have a PMO 2 DVD and a PMO 4 IDE drive for instances, most BIOS's do slow it to the slowest protocal. This was to up Stability when there was a big diffrence between CDROMS and Hard Drives.

but lets get to the real truth. since on a ATA Channel (yes EATA IDE are marketing terms for almost the same things..) Since only one device can talk at one time, your Hard Drive will have to wait for the CD to stop talking before it can post data.

SCSI does not have this problem as it uses address lines to state who is talking and SATA is a singla ATA drive on its own channel and the Chip set is not looking for another. The Drive is really no diffrent.

[xxkbxx]

if you put the two on the same ATA ribbon cable you will run your hard drive at a CD drive speed

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

No it won't.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

ah.. yes.. well it used to be..

the ATA standard is to split the channel to talk to both devices at the same speed. and as is the case with 802.11 will only talk at the slowest speed. it has to do with timing and message quing.

With the invention of PMO the system could talk using independent device timing, adn now DMA the Drive does not have to talk at all to the CPU to write to memory.

but you are limited at to what you can do .. IE if you have a PMO 2 DVD and a PMO 4 IDE drive for instances, most BIOS's do slow it to the slowest protocal. This was to up Stability when there was a big diffrence between CDROMS and Hard Drives.

but lets get to the real truth. since on a ATA Channel (yes EATA IDE are marketing terms for almost the same things..) Since only one device can talk at one time, your Hard Drive will have to wait for the CD to stop talking before it can post data.

SCSI does not have this problem as it uses address lines to state who is talking and SATA is a singla ATA drive on its own channel and the Chip set is not looking for another. The Drive is really no diffrent.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

yeah, what he said!

just hook up the CD drive to the end of an ATA cable as MASTER and the hard drive to a SATA cable - simple as that