Another n00b in need of help

[BowerR64]

I just got an NF7 and was about to hook put all my gear into the box and get it ready for a machine to rip videos with. I had some questions about the plugs for the drives.

This board only has 2 ide plugs and i have 2 drives and a DVD

is it better to have the main drive on its own cable on the first IDE plug then put the second drive as a slave with the CDrom on the second? I wanted to run the OS and the rip program on drive 1 then rip the files to the second drive. If i put them on the same cable and plug will that cause problems?

Abit NF7
1900+ XP
Thermalright SLK900 80mm fan
geil PC3200 512 ram
GF4 MX660
2X 20 gig WD ATA 100s

[Prok]

I'm no expert but I would say to put both hd's on one cable on the primary ide slot (make one the master and the other as the slave), then put the DVD drive on its own cable into the secondary ide slot.

[L337 M33P]

Originally posted by Prok
I'm no expert but I would say to put both hd's on one cable on the primary ide slot (make one the master and the other as the slave), then put the DVD drive on its own cable into the secondary ide slot.

Er... that's not the best thing to do. If you want to transfer stuff efficiently between the two drives or read and write data to them simultaneously, it is best to have them on separate channels.

There is no physical difference between the Primary and Secondary IDE channels, the BIOS just looks for the boot drive on the Primary first.

Put the drive that you will have operating system (Windows) and the initial rip on the Primary channel. Set the other drive to master and put that on the secondary channel with the DVD as a slave. One you finish ripping to drive 1 put it onto drive 2 when you are not using the DVD ROM anymore.

[K1ll1nT1m3]

It should be better with the HDD on its own IDE ( i think ). To rip files to cds ( or whatever ) the file gets stored in a temp folder on the HDD first before they are written to cd.

It shouldnt make much difference, as long as the devices are using the fastest DMA transfer mode possible. You can check UDMA modes in Device Manager, under the IDE Contoller section. Your HDDs should be using UDMA5, and the DVD might be using UDMA2 or some other DMA mode ( probably a 2 ).

I would try it with a HDD on each IDE first, with the DVD on the second IDE as slave.

[BowerR64]

Im not putting anything to CD, im just ripping from the tv to my computer. Music videos to jam around the house or working on other stuff.

I normaly rip to DVD quality for the first pass from Svideo at the max resolution,quality and stuff then i edit out all the junk and rerip it to wmv and use the wmv file as the file i listen to and watch.

I thought you want the OS and the video ripping program on one drive and you rip the files to the second drive for the best performance? Both drives being independant and moving data seperatly? Some one sugested this before.

[BowerR64]

what if i wana add a burner later? how should i install 2 drives and 2 roms?

1 HDD and one rom on one IDE channel, and the second HDD and rom on the second?

boot HDD on IDE1 and the DVD, second HDD as master and the burner on IDE2? would this be best?

[K1ll1nT1m3]

Then yes, I would use the OS HDD as IDE1 primary, the other HDD as IDE2 Primary. Then you stick your dvd ( or whatever ) drives as slaves. Usually a HDD has a burst data transfer of around 50Mbs. A DVD is usually around 33Mbs. So putting 100Mps (2 HDDs) on one cable could slow things down. Thats why your better to have the HDDs on different cables.

As far your capture program, yes, you would be better to have the program on one drive and save the file to another drive. That way you can get the full write speed of the 2nd HDD.

Edit: I doubt it would make much difference though. ( correct me if im wrong ) I doubt your capture program is trying to save 30Mbs. Plus, it shouldnt take too much to run that program. It should mostly run from memory. I dont see why the actual program would need much disk access.