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Mac Pro and Windows XP - Running from IDE

B

brockbr

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Apr 5, 2006
4
0
So after having the same problems as everyone else with the SATA drives on the new MacPro, I added a 400Gb IDE drive under the optical drive.

I then used Bootcamp to remove the previous partition from my SATA drive, put in the XP cd, rebooted from CD, and let XP format the 400gb drive with NTFS and installed windows.

WOW - This machine SCREAMS with this configuration! I know it would be far better running from the SATA, but I actually like the idea of keeping my Windows install seperate.

I know this isn't the end-all solution for most people, but, since IDE drives are so cheap, it is viable.

Just my $.02
 
Setting the drive as slave alongside the optical, I get
15MB/sec - Not so good...


But...

Setting the drive as master, and resetting the SuperDrive to slave:
57MB/sec

Obvioulsy, it's not the 150MB/sec of a screaming SATA drive, but heh, it works MUCH better :D
 
Consultation! Thanks a lot for responses.
Do you have two IDE drivers? I mean for example, you get two hard drivers, I suppose you can’t just set two HD on Master, so, one in Master, one in slave, no SuperDrive, in this case, the HD in Slave, dose it work just 15MB/sec? So I get the HD Master just work fin, but de HD Slave is not good?:(

Thanks!
 
brockbr said:
Setting the drive as slave alongside the optical, I get
15MB/sec - Not so good...


But...

Setting the drive as master, and resetting the SuperDrive to slave:
57MB/sec

Obvioulsy, it's not the 150MB/sec of a screaming SATA drive, but heh, it works MUCH better :D
Click to expand...

As long as you are getting 50+MB/sec I wouldn't worry about it.

There is a large difference between the theoretically maximum transfer rate and the actual.

S-ATA drives may support 3Gb/sec but they are still limited by the rotation speed of the disks etc.
 
chrismmx said:
Consultation! Thanks a lot for responses.
Do you have two IDE drivers? I mean for example, you get two hard drivers, I suppose you can’t just set two HD on Master, so, one in Master, one in slave, no SuperDrive, in this case, the HD in Slave, dose it work just 15MB/sec? So I get the HD Master just work fin, but de HD Slave is not good?:(

Thanks!
Click to expand...

No, if you put the optical drive as master, everything on that IDE cable will run at the same transfer rate.

Having two harddrives will not change the speed.
 
Pressure said:
No, if you put the optical drive as master, everything on that IDE cable will run at the same transfer rate.

Having two harddrives will not change the speed.
Click to expand...

Excuse me, I don’t understand. I'm just a litte idiot:(
I mean if I don’t have any optical driver, ok. I have just TWO Harddrivers. One set in master. On set in slave(in the place de opticaldriver, I just can put two HD in the MacPro’s compartment).
So, in this case, these two Hard drivers if
they run both in 57MB/sec?
Or, the master runs in 57MB/sec, the Slave runs in 15MB/sec?
Or, they run both in 15MB/sec?
Thanks!:D
 
excellent news!! this is exactly what i planned on doing when my mac pro arrives, which should have been yesterday...

just have a few questions, are both hard drives set to master and just the optical drive is set to slave? also, when your ide drive was in slave it was slower, does putting the optical drive in slave make it run slower? thanks!
 
chrismmx said:
Excuse me, I don’t understand. I'm just a litte idiot:(
I mean if I don’t have any optical driver, ok. I have just TWO Harddrivers. One set in master. On set in slave(in the place de opticaldriver, I just can put two HD in the MacPro’s compartment).
So, in this case, these two Hard drivers if
they run both in 57MB/sec?
Or, the master runs in 57MB/sec, the Slave runs in 15MB/sec?
Or, they run both in 15MB/sec?
Thanks!:D
Click to expand...

They both will run at the faster transfer rate.

It's like a wireless network where the network is never faster than the slowest connection connected to it.

Example:
We have three computers, all with their own wireless network cards.
Computer A has a 54mbit NIC
Computer B also has a 54mbit NIC
But Computer C only has a 11mbit NIC and therefore the entire network is slowed down to 11mbit, so all computers can communicate.

A bit simplistic but it should give you the general idea :)
 
Pressure said:
They both will run at the faster transfer rate.

It's like a wireless network where the network is never faster than the slowest connection connected to it.

Example:
We have three computers, all with their own wireless network cards.
Computer A has a 54mbit NIC
Computer B also has a 54mbit NIC
But Computer C only has a 11mbit NIC and therefore the entire network is slowed down to 11mbit, so all computers can communicate.

A bit simplistic but it should give you the general idea :)
Click to expand...

Have you tried this on a Mac Pro? I did. It does NOT work this way.

HD as Master, optical as slave:
In Windows my HD was running at UDMA5, Optical was running at UDMA2.

Optical as master, HD as slave:
In Windows, my optical was running at UDMA5 (If I recall correct, gotta find my old posts) and my HD was running at UDMA0.


So no, it doesn't mean they will both run at the same speeds at all.

Edit: here is the link - https://forums.macrumors.com/posts/2718609/
 
Pressure said:
It works with its intended Operating System, Mac OSX.
Click to expand...

I'd disagree with that. Apple has made a pretty big deal of promoting Boot Camp and dual booting Windows, so I would agrue that it is INTENDED to run both OS X and Windows.

Anways, good use for the second optical bay, and a good use for a spare IDE drive lying around (40gbs would likely do for a limited Windows system - one important work app or gaming or something).

Does the Mac Pro have just one IDE channel then?
 
brockbr said:
Setting the drive as slave alongside the optical, I get
15MB/sec - Not so good...


But...

Setting the drive as master, and resetting the SuperDrive to slave:
57MB/sec

Obvioulsy, it's not the 150MB/sec of a screaming SATA drive, but heh, it works MUCH better :D
Click to expand...

Yes it works much better, but can you eject your optical drive using the eject button or F12 in OSX?

I couldn't.

https://forums.macrumors.com/posts/2718609/


I suggest you guys read some of my other posts. I've tried all this and explained my findings here on this forum.
 
mrgreen4242 said:
I'd disagree with that. Apple has made a pretty big deal of promoting Boot Camp and dual booting Windows, so I would agrue that it is INTENDED to run both OS X and Windows.

Anways, good use for the second optical bay, and a good use for a spare IDE drive lying around (40gbs would likely do for a limited Windows system - one important work app or gaming or something).

Does the Mac Pro have just one IDE channel then?
Click to expand...

Apple has also stated very clearly that Boot Camp is B E T A.

Apple does not support Windows. They only give you the means to run it.
 
SATA hard drive performance is fullspeed on the laptops, the iMac, and the Mac Mini.

It is as slow as an internet connection on the Mac Pro.

Therefore, by saying "oh they have no obligation it's a beta they don't support Windows blah blah blah", you're creating a double standard for Apple's support.
 
Pressure said:
No, if you put the optical drive as master, everything on that IDE cable will run at the same transfer rate.
Click to expand...

That isn't the way it works. As long as you are using an 80-conductor cable, both drives will run at their maximum rate. HOWEVER, you do run into 'contention'. For example, if the optical drive is running at 33 MB/s transfer rate (P.S. No current optical drive can actually transfer data that fast off the disc, this is the theoretical maximum rate of the protocol over the wire,) then it will take a certain amount of time to transfer 1 MB of data (1/33rd of a second.) A hard drive on the same cable running at 133 MB/s transfer rate (again, no current ATA drive can actually transfer data that fast off the disk...) would take less time to transfer 1 MB of data (1/133rd of a second.) So in 1/33rd of a second, the hard drive will transfer 4 MB of data. Four times faster than the optical drive.

BUT, the hard drive still has to wait for the optical drive to finish talking. So you'll likely end up with 1/33 of a second optical transfer, 1/133 hard drive, 1/33 optical, 1/133 hard drive. The hard drive is only transferring data 1/4 of the time, on a 'saturated' bus. If the hard drive alone is transferring data, it can use up the whole 133 MB/s it is capable of. But as long as the optical drive is transferring data, the hard drive will be limited.

In reality, it shouldn't matter, since neither drive can approach the maximum transfer rate of the protocol it is using. Only if you were, say, ripping a DVD to a separate hard drive, AND trying to import full resolution, uncompressed HD to the hard drive, would you run into any issues.
 
ehurtley said:
That isn't the way it works. As long as you are using an 80-conductor cable, both drives will run at their maximum rate. HOWEVER, you do run into 'contention'. For example, if the optical drive is running at 33 MB/s transfer rate (P.S. No current optical drive can actually transfer data that fast off the disc, this is the theoretical maximum rate of the protocol over the wire,) then it will take a certain amount of time to transfer 1 MB of data (1/33rd of a second.) A hard drive on the same cable running at 133 MB/s transfer rate (again, no current ATA drive can actually transfer data that fast off the disk...) would take less time to transfer 1 MB of data (1/133rd of a second.) So in 1/33rd of a second, the hard drive will transfer 4 MB of data. Four times faster than the optical drive.

BUT, the hard drive still has to wait for the optical drive to finish talking. So you'll likely end up with 1/33 of a second optical transfer, 1/133 hard drive, 1/33 optical, 1/133 hard drive. The hard drive is only transferring data 1/4 of the time, on a 'saturated' bus. If the hard drive alone is transferring data, it can use up the whole 133 MB/s it is capable of. But as long as the optical drive is transferring data, the hard drive will be limited.

In reality, it shouldn't matter, since neither drive can approach the maximum transfer rate of the protocol it is using. Only if you were, say, ripping a DVD to a separate hard drive, AND trying to import full resolution, uncompressed HD to the hard drive, would you run into any issues.
Click to expand...

Corrected :)

Guess I was half asleep there.

But in any case, you should always have the hard disk as master.

There are several reasons why optical drives should not be shared on the same channel as a fast hard disk, however. IDE/ATA share the same physical channels but they don't share the same protocol. Opticals are by their nature much slower devices than hard disks and may have trouble dealing with DMA bus mastering, meaning that you cannot enable bus mastering for any hard disk on the channel they are using.
 
sweet!

sweet!

ok so this is what i manage to do...
i got my IDE hdd drive put it under the 2nd Drive bay.. used it as Master and the DVD burner as Slave

now i get 62MB/s instead of the SATA 3MB/s :D
all the keyboard shortcuts seem to work under Windows XP

but.... and heres the tricky part
under OSX all the keyboard shortcuts to eject the dvd are now no longer functional (as stated by tobyg)
and also as suggested by tobyg going to terminal and typing "drutil eject" will pop it open

soooo... i quicky learned AppleScript and made lil executable files on my desktop to solve this issue..
i now have a button to.... open the drive.. close the drive and eject the drive

and for me this is a pretty good temp fix until the SATA gets fixed... :D
weeeeee
 
aiongiant said:
sweet!

ok so this is what i manage to do...
i got my IDE hdd drive put it under the 2nd Drive bay.. used it as Master and the DVD burner as Slave

now i get 62MB/s instead of the SATA 3MB/s :D
all the keyboard shortcuts seem to work under Windows XP

but.... and heres the tricky part
under OSX all the keyboard shortcuts to eject the dvd are now no longer functional (as stated by tobyg)
and also as suggested by tobyg going to terminal and typing "drutil eject" will pop it open

soooo... i quicky learned AppleScript and made lil executable files on my desktop to solve this issue..
i now have a button to.... open the drive.. close the drive and eject the drive

and for me this is a pretty good temp fix until the SATA gets fixed... :D
weeeeee
Click to expand...

Yep, I was planning on doing that too, if I had kept my Mac Pro.

It is just the weird little stuff like this that made me return the Mac Pro. You run the optical drive as slave instead of master and now the eject key doesn't work? And the fact that depending on which is master and slave, hd or optical, they will run at different speeds? That makes no sense. It's weird stuff like that which made me return the Mac Pro. I hope they fix these issues.
 
aiongiant said:
sweet!

ok so this is what i manage to do...
i got my IDE hdd drive put it under the 2nd Drive bay.. used it as Master and the DVD burner as Slave

now i get 62MB/s instead of the SATA 3MB/s :D
all the keyboard shortcuts seem to work under Windows XP

but.... and heres the tricky part
under OSX all the keyboard shortcuts to eject the dvd are now no longer functional (as stated by tobyg)
and also as suggested by tobyg going to terminal and typing "drutil eject" will pop it open

soooo... i quicky learned AppleScript and made lil executable files on my desktop to solve this issue..
i now have a button to.... open the drive.. close the drive and eject the drive

and for me this is a pretty good temp fix until the SATA gets fixed... :D
weeeeee
Click to expand...

Could you share that AppleScript file? Or at least tell us commonfolk how to do it?
 
Heres the applescripts

'--------------

tell application "Terminal"
activate
do script "drutil eject"
quit
end tell

'---------------

some commands...
"drutil eject" = eject dvd
"drutil open" = opens drive
"drutil close" = close drive

ive also attached a zip file with all the executables... open..close..eject...

Open DVD.app is well of course to open the drive (not but used to eject if theres a disc inside)
Eject DVD.app is the one to use if you have a disc inside (you don't really need this since you can jsut drag the disc to the trash to eject)
Close DVD.app is well close he drive

enjoy!
 

Attachments

  • Shortcuts.zip
    51.4 KB · Views: 137
If you right-click on a CD or whatnot on your desktop and tell it to eject, does that work as well? Or click the Eject button next to it in the sidebar?
 
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