Can IDE hard drive and CD-ROM have same controller?

P

pppsyang

Limp Gawd
Joined
May 14, 2001
Messages
138
I am trying to add two IDE hard drive to my PC.

I already have one IDE hard drive as the system drive. Only one is left for a hard drive. There is another IDE controller for CD-ROM and one is available.

Can CD-ROM and IDE hard drive share the same IDE controller?
 
a typical core logic set consists of one ide controller that contains two channels. these two channels can have two devices for a total of 4 compatible mode ide devices.

An old errata still haunts the ide world even though it is truly non existent. the triton 430 fx had a independent timing error in the logic. when a faster device was attached to the same channel as a slower device it would slow down to its timing mode of the slower. e.g. if you had a dma mode 1 hard drive and then a pio mode 2 cd-rom drive. the timings will be placed to the lowest setting. This is what lead to the separate channels for hard drives and cd-rom's.

this does not need to be followed anymore and was only because of this one core logic, seriously. All ide channels have independent timing for the devices so it will not slow down to a slower timing. But the way ide devices work, also with various operating systems, you may place them on different channels to gain a very minor concurrent ability of the devices. This does not need to be followed either. ide's forte is not with concurrent transactions. thats is for scsi and its only selling point.

so yes, you connect them how ever you want as long as the device is properly configured then you will not have any issues.
 
the HD will default to the lower speed of the cd rom so its kind of a waist for a fast hd on the same chain as a cd rom. so the hd will only run at UDMA 33 instead of say 100
 
Originally posted by ALL4AMD
the HD will default to the lower speed of the cd rom so its kind of a waist for a fast hd on the same chain as a cd rom. so the hd will only run at UDMA 33 instead of say 100
Click to expand...

No. that was fixed a long time ago ...
 
However, only one device can use the channel at a time, so drive to drive operations that are on the same channel will be much slower than two drives on seperate channels. Using a pci controller card to add more ide channels so that each can be master of it's own channel can enhance performance under multi-drive communication conditions, i.e. page or temp files on seperate drive from os or cd > hd extraction / burning.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top