IDE Configuration

[matt_hobson]

Hi,

I have just ordered the bits for a new PC, but am a bit confused as what to do for my IDE configuration, i will have:

1* CD RW
1* DVD RW
1* SATA Hard Drive

i read the following in a guide:

Of course it is perfectly acceptable to connect a CD-ROM as Primary-Slave or a HDD as Secondary-Master or Secondary-Slave, but Primary-Master must be a HDD as it is the boot device.

How should i connect the above situation? If i connect both oprical drives under the same IDE connector (1 master and 1 slave) then will i only get sound through 1 device?

As i will have both IDE channels free, would it be better practice to have each optical drive on a separate IDE channel?

Also what happens about the Primary one not being the hard drive (as i am using SATA) for booting up?

[Rythmic]

With your setup, you should be using one connector per optical drive as you say. The guides old, and doesn't count when you've got additional controllers onboard - or even any new BIOS. It was a good idea when we only had PATA though

You can pick your boot device in the BIOS don't worry

[matt_hobson]

cheers mate, thought that was the case...just like to check

[Aaron]

It's best practice to have each device on a seperate cable.

Most motherboards these days come with onboard RAID, so you can use the RAID for the HDs and then run one CD/DVD-ROM off each of the two regular IDE connectors.

The only difficulty arises when you have to install Windows. To install it on a RAID device, you'll need to insert the RAID driver disk when prompted. Watch out though, it gives you about 0.8 seconds to press F8 to tell it that you want to install the RAID drivers!