HD jumper settings

[blue&whiteman]

I have a blue and white G3 rev. 2 upgraded with a sonnet G4/500, 256mb ram, original 6GB maxtor drive and a Radeon 7000 in the 66MHz slot.

I am buying a Western Digital Speacial Edition 120GB w/8MB cache tomorrow and need to know what jumper settings would be best to use both drives. I currently use OSX 10.3.1 and want to use the new drive as a main boot drive since it will be a bit faster but am worried that if I just set it up as a slave I may lose some performance. I will be installing it right overtop the maxtor in the rev. 2 dual stack bracket. My plan is to use the maxtor as a utility drive to run tools on the main western digital so I don't have to repair my drive from a boot cd.

What attack plan would be best to get the result I want? ie. a way that the new drive will not be held back in performance on the already slow ATA/33 bus.

Thanks in advance.

 

[blue&whiteman]

would dual master maybe be the answer?

 

[blue&whiteman]

someone please help me. I get the drive in less than 24 hours and need some expert advice. please please help me

 

[Rower_CPU]

If both drives are on the same ATA channel, they will only be as fast as the slowest drive, regardless of jumper settings.

I haven't found too many issues with jumper settings and performance, since they mainly only deal with how the devices are configured on the cable. Personally, I try to always use the "cable select" setting, which ensures that the drive can be moved anywhere on the cable without having to change the settings.

For future reference, this kind of thread goes best in hardware discussion and help, and you are far more likely to get responses during the week compared to over the weekend.

 

[blue&whiteman]

so I guess the best way to get the most performance I can out of the newer/faster drive is to remove the original one all together?

 

[Rower_CPU]

Well, it depends on what speed it and the channel are.

Here's my understanding of how it works:
- the ATA channel will only run as fast as the slowest component on it. This is why it is a bad idea to combine optical and removable media drives with hard drives on the same channel.
- if the old drive is ATA33 and the new one is ATA100, the channel will slow down to ATA33 to match the speed of the slower drive
- if the channel itself is ATA33, that's all you will get, regardless of drive speed.

If you are really concerned about performance, and you can't juggle drives and channels to ensure it, you can get a PCI ATA controller to put the new drive on a dedicated, high-speed channel.

 

[blue&whiteman]

I could always install the original drive under the cdrw couldn't I? there is no zip drive in my tower so that space is empty. I understand that the drive will perform slower there but at least it won't slow down the new one.

like I said I only plan to use the original as a boot drive for running utilities such as drive 10.

am I on the right track or way off?

 

[blue&whiteman]

its the original ata 33 chip controller. I understand that the new drive even though it is an ata 100 will only run at 33 because of the controller chip.

will the original maxtor slow down the new ones 7200rpm and 8MB cache vs the originals 5400rpm and 512k cache.

sorry, i'm new at the whole hardware thing. I never touched the inside of my tower till about 4 months ago to add the new vid card and an extra 128 ram.

all advice is very appreciated

 

[Rower_CPU]

The individual cache sizes and rotational speeds don't interact with each other the way the ATA speed does, so you're fine there.

 

[blue&whiteman]

so the new one won't be slowed down at all other than running at ata 33 rather than its ata 100? if so thats a non issue for now because of the controller speed anyway.


after this last question I will shut up

 

[Rower_CPU]

As far as I understand your situation: yes.

You'll still get the benefits of the rotational speed and cache, no matter what the controller speed.

 

[superbovine]

This link might help you.

http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/IDE/add_2nd_drive/index.html

You are wrong on your understanding of the IDE/ATA channel. The ata controler card dedictates the speed of the drives not the slowest drive. the only time that is the case is when copy from hard drive to hard drive on the same channel, or hard drive to cd-rom etc. you get the idea.

if you don't a lot of burning from hard drive to cd-r you should put the hard drive and cd-r on different channels this will increase your throughput.

Originally posted by Rower_CPU
Well, it depends on what speed it and the channel are.

Here's my understanding of how it works:
- the ATA channel will only run as fast as the slowest component on it. This is why it is a bad idea to combine optical and removable media drives with hard drives on the same channel.
- if the old drive is ATA33 and the new one is ATA100, the channel will slow down to ATA33 to match the speed of the slower drive
- if the channel itself is ATA33, that's all you will get, regardless of drive speed.

If you are really concerned about performance, and you can't juggle drives and channels to ensure it, you can get a PCI ATA controller to put the new drive on a dedicated, high-speed channel.

 

[blue&whiteman]

since my last post I turned my comp off and installed my original maxtor underneath my cdrw on its bus. I won't be doing any burning from this original drive anymore so that shouldn't be an issue with what superbovine mentioned with burning. the original drive will save me from having to swap the cdrw out for the original rom to boot from for drive 10. boot cds are also much slower than even this slow 6GB maxtor drive.

I did this position swap with the original because I just need to be 100% sure I can suck every ounce of speed out of this new drive since its on a slow ata bus. so the new drive will be on that ata bus all alone now.

 

[Rower_CPU]

Originally posted by superbovine
..

You are wrong on your understanding of the IDE/ATA channel. The ata controler card dedictates the speed of the drives not the slowest drive. the only time that is the case is when copy from hard drive to hard drive on the same channel, or hard drive to cd-rom etc. you get the idea.

if you don't a lot of burning from hard drive to cd-r you should put the hard drive and cd-r on different channels this will increase your throughput.

Thanks for the clarification. I was unclear in my earlier statements.