hardrive hookups and hangups

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frogg_mann

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First off, hello and how the heck are you all? My question is does anyone have any suggestions on hook'n up two hardrives? I've read various suggestions from different sources. I've always gotten very good ideas here. Thank you, and any feedback on this issue would be great. I'd like to connect these so they give me the most optimal performance Any ideas?
 
You'll need to be more specific m8.
There are plenty of ways to "hook up 2 HDD's" the trick is knowing what you want to acheive...oh yeah,
and ATA speeds, sizes, partition plans, IDE/SATA etc
Otherwise some bright sparks gonna chip-in with "Use a cable".
;)
 
Soyo DragonLite mobo
AMD Athlon XP 2200+ 1800 MHz
Memory: 767 MB ddr ram
60GB ATA/133 Maxtor diamondmax Plus 9 hardrive
^(one in the box also)^ I know they don't have the best rep. but the price was too good to passup.
ATI Radeon 8500 series gcard 128 ddr ram
Creative Audigy sound card
OS: Winxp pro
misc: Antec 10 bay tower, 400watt p/s
two extra cooling fans, Optorite CD-RW DVD/CD-ROM, v9056k modem
Is this enough info?
thank you erbmaster
 
set each hard drive as master on seperate ide cables, then hang the cd/dvd's as slaves. thats classed as optimal config.
 
^^That's OK providing the cables/channels support different ATA access speeds.^^
If not throw both (identical?) HDD's on the Primary Channel, and stick the DVD/CD's on the Secondary.
Otherwise your slowest device will be slowing yer drive down.

Oh yeah, you'll probably find your board will support Cable Select, so don't worry about Master/Slave if that's the case.
 
Originally posted by frogg_mann

60GB ATA/133 Maxtor diamondmax Plus 9 hardrive
^(one in the box also)^ I know they don't have the best rep. but the price was too good to passup.

Why do you say that? Maxtor makes very high quality drives. They're one of the best.

The obvious choice is to use a master/slave setup. Where 2 hard drives are on the same IDE cable. One acts as the primary (master) and the other acts as a slave (secondary). But don't let the titles fool you. Both drives are fully accessible in this configuration. You'll notice that your IDE cable (the long flat cable that connects your HD to your motherboard) has 2 connectors on it. The one on the end is the master connector, the one in the middle is the slave connector. Keep your current drive on the master connector, and just add a new drive to the slave connector, and that's all. Your system should pick up this new drive automatically. If not, then it's a simple matter of configuring it in the BIOS. Format the new drive, partition it the way you want it, and you'll be good to go.

I guess another choice would be a RAID array, but that's more complicated and more of a hazard to your data. I really wouldn't recommend this setup to a beginner.

If your motherboard has an SATA controller, or you want to add an SATA adapter in, you could buy and use an SATA drive as well. But again, a little more complicated for you than my first suggestion.

But whichever way you choose, you just need to make sure there's a spot in your case to put a second hard drive.

Hope this helped.

:)
 
Ok let me take all this in and see if I have it right. be back in few, thanks Vector, Erbmaster, Gonzo
8)
 
you could use sisoft sandra free edition to test the drive speeds in various configs :)
 
Oh yeah ,,forgot to tell you that, and that I use my puter for everything from gaming to business.
One partition. Lookin for opts. (I'm a rookie on the bus.) speed and graphics and keeping my files protected and in order are the main goals.
Bright sparks,,,I have a cable 8), is there a way to make the two H/D's read as one?
Would this be possible? Or lame? or impossible? My thinking was putting page file on one to increase speed would this work? Or am I getting over my technological head?

Vector, I havn't had any trouble with mine (maxtor) I read it in another forum somewhere. It was based on one person's experience. I guess I should look into the facts alittle further, my mistake basing it on one other persons experience before weighing out the overall facts.

Ok the flight plan:
Going to hang both hd's on an 80 pin IDE ribbon. Via primary slot on the mobo. Master on the end. Slave on the first connection. Setting jumpers as such.

Hang the CD/DVD RW ROM in secondary mobo slot from a 40 pin IDE ribbon. For some reason the 40 pin IDE ribbon is faster both in reading and writing. At least it has been with the single H/D on the primary(set at master) and the ROM on the secondary(set at master) and that should still apply right?

If trouble arrise's i'll set both H/Ds at cable select and Rom at cable select and try that option. Or should I set ROM at secondary master? hmmmmm I guess i'm not quite ready for take off. I'll stand by for further instructions. whewwwww, ok is that right! thanks again
 
I do have sisoft sandra, will give it a try when i get everything in position. thanks Gonzo
 
Both hardrives are identical. Maxtor diamondMax Plus 9 60gb's
ATA/133
 
Ok, must be the leftovers boggin us down. Ill see you when I land. Wish me luck. 8) Hopefully I'll clear the trees at the end of the runway.8)
 
Roger Wilco, sierra, tea, kettle, barbecue....OVER.
The ducks are on the pond, and the eagle has landed...repeat! etc etc...

The extra lines are there to offer data stability (extra earth cores)
The 40 line cable (40 pin cable you mentioned earlier, although they both have 40 pins) shouldn't be faster.
Check out your DMA/ATA speeds both in Windows, and on your BIOS config page.
If you're gonna run the drives at UDMA133, then you'll certainly need to be using the 80 line cable.

You can run both drives as one large drive, and it's a feature readily offered by most RAID options.
It's called JBOD (Just a Bunch Of Disks) It lets several drives emulate as one huge drive to the eyes of the OS.
(Similar to RAID ) except you get the full storage space opf both drives combined, rather than the total of one.

Runway is clear for landing....begin descent...#


Oooh wait....pigeon on the tarmac....:eek: are you reading flight 147...over!?!
 
Now that I'm probably too late to be of any help...

Given no Raid on your MB and your desired speed and data protection requirements I recommend the following:

Both drives on one IDE controller. This avoids any issues with a slow optical drive slowing down the HD when installed on the same channell.

Partition the first drive as follows:

Partition 1 - about 10 gigs. This is your operating system partition where you install windows, office, critical applications etc.
The small size of this partition reduces access time when windows is loading and makes for fast defragmentation and disk checks.

Partition 2 - about 50 gigs. This is for your run of the mill applications, games, mp3s, dowloads, data storage and teansient programs (tryout stuff, taxes etc.). This way the bulk of your data is unaffected if you have to reinstall windows or worse yet reformat the windows partition because of a virus or corruption.

Partition 3 - about 3-5 gigs. This is where you place your pagefile and where you store ISO images when copying CDs, DVDs, etc. The small size makes access time faster when windows is using the swap file and helps prevent buffer underruns when burning CDs/DVDs.
Make the pagefile fixed size at 150% the size of your ram. 512 ram make pagefile 768. The fixed pagefile prevent fragmentation which slows access significantly.

Use the second drive as a manually operated mirror. Once a week make an image of the first drive. For best data protection remove the image HD and store it some place safe between backups. This lets you recover any data loss catastrophy to within a week.

If you need the space on the second drive leave it installed and just image partition 1 and what you consider critical data from Partition 2.

PS Maxtor is an ok drive. Watch out for seagate ;)
 
LeeJend your recommendations about the pagefile are completely wrong. Dealer will catch you. ;)

Don't maked it a fixed size - you can only loose and gain nothing, and don't put it on another partition on the same drive.
Best bet, it should be on the most often accessed partition on the least often accessed harddrive.
 
^^^yay^^^
Fixed sized swap/page files were useful once, but not in an XP environment ;)
 
thanks everyone,
roger,I'm hitt'n after burners, will keep land lines open. over.8)
 
Ok here's what happened,
I hung both hardrives on the Primary 80 line ribbon the slave drive on the first connector set at slave. The Master on the connector at the end of the ribbon set at jumper set at Master.
I booted up into bios and the slave didnt show up, the setup screen said the slave failed to be recognized. I went ahead and continued to boot to windows. No slave. Ok I then shutdown and switched both jumpers to Cable Select leaving both drives on the ribbon the same way. Booted and "bingo" they both were shown in there perspective drive letters. And now they both seem to be fine. I havn't tried changing any partitions and I don't think I will as long as everything worksout the way it's setup now. As they sayin goes, "If it's not broke don't fix it."
or the government's "fix it until it breaks".

Thanks go out to everyone that helped out. erbmaster,gonzo, vector,yoyo and leejend. hope I didn't forget anyone. 8)
 

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