hard drive ide master/slave question

[shmeggegie]

I would like to have a dvd-rom, cd-rw, floppy and zip drive and 1 or 2 hard drives in my computer. Is it possible to have all of these with just the 2 standard ide channels on my motherboard? will I have to buy an additional ide controller card? what should be a slave to what? thank you in advance.

<b>Studies have shown that most people prefer the taste of AMD to the taste of Intel</b>

 

[Guest]

For a start get a USB zip drive or even a multi card/zip unit, make the bootable HD with the o/s as primary master, the main optical that you will use as primary slave, the other hard drive and optical IMO as whatever you will use the most and make that secondary master. My experience is to keep the optical readers/writers apart, especially if ya want to burn, if you need to use two of those four predominately and together place each of them on a different channels that way no transmittance interferences down the same ribbon will occur, this does not happen with SCSI.
But this is my version of what I would do and I am sure there are other opinions in this regard. Good luck.


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[jlanka]

just to rephrase, the answer to your questio is yes as long as you make the zip drive a USB. Then you can put the 2 hard drives master, the 2 optical drives slave, the zip on the USB and the floppy on the floppy controller.

<i>It's always the one thing you never suspected.</i>

 

[shmeggegie]

well, I think I'm sticking to just the one WD1200JB since it's a 120 gig drive, and I don't think I'll need more than that at one time. So, would the hard drive be primary master, then with the cdrw as primary slave, and then the dvd-rom as secondary master? Then I could plug the zip drive in as secondary slave. I'm surprised, actually, that zip drives don't use floppy cables.

<b>Studies have shown that most people prefer the taste of AMD to the taste of Intel</b>

 

[kief]

I would pu tthe hard disk n its own channel and the CD drives on th second.....

Jesus saves, but Mario scores!!!

 

[Crashman]

SCSI is your best answer. Get a SCSI Zip and either a SCSI CDRW or SCSI DVD-ROM. That will free up the IDE channels for other devices. SCSI cards go for under $30 now. While you're at it, get a nice SCSI scanner.

What's the frequency, Kenneth?

 

[Guest]

Actually, if you plan on copying "on the fly" from the DVD to the RW, you don't want them on the same channel.

 

[shmeggegie]

so then:
primary master: hard drive
secondary master: dvd-rom
primary slave: cd-rw
secondary slave: zip

sound about right?

<b>Studies have shown that most people prefer the taste of AMD to the taste of Intel</b>

 

[Guest]

Sounds good! Give it a whirl and see...

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