2 hard drives in a shuttle?

[^^Gord^^]

Has anyone tried running two HDs in their shuttles? What was the heat difference like?

I want to do the following:

Onboard Pri IDE - OS HD
Onboard Sec IDE - DVD RW
PCI IDE card - Storage HD

The idea being I can burn DVDs, copy files etc and still watch movies and play games etc without maxing my current single HD.

Ta.

[5lab]

i'd imagine you can do it pretty easily - it would take up the fdd thou

with ata133 there is no need at all for another ide card, even with 4hdds on one controller you'd only reach max at about 200mb/s, and ata 133 would provide 266mb/s

[s1lv3r]

did it from day one in my SN45G.. heat has only been a problem when i didn't monitor it using speedfan... not an issue if you manage it right

my config: primary IDE = maxtor 80gig (7200rpm)
secondary IDE = IBM deskstar 45gig (7200rpm) and samsung DVD/CD-RW

[^^Gord^^]

I thought with IDE you could only have one IDE connection in use at any one time?

So by having two IDE controllers I could have two IDE connections live at any one point.

[^^Gord^^]

Thanks s1lv3r, I might go for the old suck it and see.

[5lab]

nonono. ide supports 2 drives per channel - thats why the ide cables have 3 connectors on - one for mobo, one for drive 0 and one for drive 1. you have to set them up so one is master (normally the faster or boot drive) and one as slave (slower, ie storage drive), but its not too important which is which. then just hook the cable up (doesnt matter which end goes in which drive, but common practice is that the blue end goes in the mobo) and power the drives up and you're away

[^^Gord^^]

I wasn't talking a physical connection to the devices I was talking about an active communication between the IDE device and the system bus. My fault, I was a little vague in my reply.

The way I understand it, is that when your system wants to access an IDE device it open a channel to that device. Whilst this channel is open it can't talk to any of the other devices. If it needs to speak to the DVD RW then it shuts the channel and opens a new one to the DVD RW. Of course this happens so quick it appears to be seemless to the user but if you are say for example burning a DVD from your HD and trying to play Counter Strike from the same HD you will get lag due to this limitation.

[5lab]

not on a high-spec pc. you used to on say a pII system but not at all these days. infact, counterstrike should load entirely to ram on a modern system so hdd activity wont affect it at all.

[Capt Doufos]

Originally posted by ^^Gord^^

The way I understand it, is that when your system wants to access an IDE device it open a channel to that device. Whilst this channel is open it can't talk to any of the other devices. If it needs to speak to the DVD RW then it shuts the channel and opens a new one to the DVD RW. Of course this happens so quick it appears to be seemless to the user but if you are say for example burning a DVD from your HD and trying to play Counter Strike from the same HD you will get lag due to this limitation.

You are right in some ways. It can only talk to any 1 device at any 1 time, hense it will slow access but it won't stop it. They will just take there turn. Remember how many times per second these things communicate though!!!