HDD controller and performance

[Wolfy]

hullo,

am gonna have anywhere up to 3 drives in my machine shortly, just a quick question on performance and HDD controllers.

will it be better to have:
master drive on its own cable running to primary ide slot on mobo with drives 2 and 3 with their own ide cable running to 2 ports on the controller

or
master drive plus drive 2 on same cable to primary ide slot on mobo and drive 3 on cable of its own to the controller.

or drive 1 on its on cable to the primary ide slot and share an ide cable for 2 and 3 to one port on controller

i fugure the best answer is prolly one altho id like to know if there will be any major difference and also i was wondering if via a pci controller is there a performance hit to access times etc. btw i wont have the drives raided...

cheers,

Wolfy

"Its only when you look at ants closely with a magnifying glass on a sunny day that you realise how often they burst into flames"

 

[Crashman]

Only 1 drive per cable works at a time, so transfering from one drive to another is faster if they're on separate cables. To transfer to another drive on the same cable, one writes, then the other reads, then the first writes, back and forth, but this also happens quickly so the performance impact is usually acceptable.

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