[Eug-lug] HDD, CD, DVD config under FC4 SoftRAID

[Mr O]

Please, no cable select. That's plain lazy. Some drives are
picky about cable select and when done properly Master/Slave
always works. In the case of WD drives, they are picky on their
jumper settings. The label may say one thing but it might only
work if you have two WD drives. For instance, the Master setting
on a WD is the middle pins ::":":: IF the Slave drive is another
WD :::":": . Otherwise a WD master is no jumper (turn it
sideways) for Master if it's alone or with another maker's
drive. Seagate evades the standard a bit too. Their slave
setting is no jumper. Maxtor and Seagate both have the same
Master setting ":":::: and Maxtor's Slave is :":":::.
Hitachi/IBM use two jumpers for some settings so more care is
taken there. 

Another thing, I'm fairly certain IDE isn't restricted in the
same sense SCSI is as far as bus speed because IDE is limited to
one bit of transfer in each direction anyway. You'll only slow
drive access down while you're using another device on that bus.
SCSI by nature having a different bus suffers the fate of the
slowest device on the chain, wether in use or not, sets the bus
speed for the entire chain.  

That be all,
Mr O.

--- Brian Gallagher <baggab at pacinfo.com> wrote:

> Thanks Chris
> 
> I talked to Mr. O, in person, and I mentioned that the I could
> use a 
> controller card.  I replied that the ASUS board had an on
> board RAID.  
> He suggested I could use the controller channels, primary and
> secondary, 
> to plug in these matched Seagate drives.  Then I could use the
> IDE 
> channels to plug in the optical drives.
> 
> I'm using your approach till I get the data of the HDDs then I
> can 
> rebuild the RAID with the new config.  I poked around
> Wikipedia to find 
> that Cable Select was the preferred config.
> 
> Bomb defused...crisis averted. 
> 
> "Do not mix drives on the same IDE channel"
> 
> Do you mean ever?
> 
> Brian
> 
> mage at chromebob.com wrote:
> > Brian,
> >
> > OK, the only thing to remember is that the IDE channel is
> only as fast as it's slowest device.  This is something that
> is fixed in the SATA standard, but IDE still has slowdowns. 
> Really, the IDE channel can only transfer as fast as the
> slowest of the two transer rates.  That means if you have an
> ATA-100 drive, and an ATA-33 drive on the same channel, then
> the transfer for both is ATA-33.  Therefore, you should put
> the two HDD's on the same channel, and the DVD and CDRW on the
> other.  As for Master/Slave, there shouldn't be a big issue
> with them.
> >
> > Now, there is one caveat to this whole setup, are the two
> HDD the same manufacturer or not?  If not, then make them each
> the MASTER of the two IDE channels.  Then the DVD and CDRW
> drives as SLAVES.  Do not mix drives on the same IDE channel,
> I have seen drives get killed this way (a Seagate master
> killed the Boot ROM on a Western Digital slave).
> >
> > So, that is about all of the notes I have.
> >
> > Thanks,
> >


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