2nd hard drive

[cpunewbie]

hi, i have a maxtot 5400 rpm hdd on the primary ata 100 channel and want to add another hdd. i just bought a wd 7200 rpm hdd. my question is can i put this hard drive on the secondary ata 100 channel? if i can what do i set it as (master or slave)? if i put it on the same channel is the maxtor it will only run at 5400 rpm correct?? i have a t-bird 800mhz running on an asus a7v mobo. thanks ahead of time.

Help a newbie out...you were once one too...wansnt it nice when they helped you...

 

[HammerBot]

Most IDE controllers today are capable of device independent timing. Meaning that your maxtor may be running UDMA33, while your new drive is running UDMA100 even if they are on the same cable.
Older controllers had a problem with such a setup, causing both drives to run UDMA33 if just one of them did. Note: Only the transfer mode was affected, not the rotation speed of the drives.

With the board you are mentioning, it shouldn't give you any problems. However, if the maxtor runs UDMA33 it will waste bandwidth of the channel. That may give you reduced performance if you use both drives simultaneously. (e.g. while transferring files from one drive to the other). If possible you should put each drive on its own channel.
Maxter/slave setting doesnt affect the performance. But I recommend you use the faster drive (the WD) as bootdrive. Sometimes this requires that you set the drive as master.

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