[tom bianco]

Hi, I have purchased an Asus P4C800-E Deluxe Mobo. I am installing a Western Digital "WD2500 JBRTL" 250 GB hard drive, and an Plextor premium CD burner. I installed the ata card that originally came with the hard drive, and connected the Hard drive to the IDE! port. I am wondering if I can connect the CD optical drive to the secondary IDE drive on the motherboard, or does this need to be connected on the ATA card that was included with the hard drive.

Since I am only running these two drives I would like to leave the optical drive on its own port for better performance. I could also use some advice on how to set the drive settings. Thanks

 

[Mental_Myopia]

Yes, you can attach the CD drive to the motherboard, which is what I recommend for best performance.

Is there any special reason why you're using the controller card that came with the hard drive? You've got a sweet mobo that can handle the hard drive quite well without the controller card. The onboard IDE port bypasses the PCI bus, which should help performance.

 

[tom bianco]

WD 250GB Hard drive/Jumper settings

Actually I did not know whether or not there would be some conflict with the mobo in recognizing the drive. The instructions and the included ATA card must be included for older mobo's then? If that's the case I would prefer connecting the hard drive to the motherboard, thanks

I would also like to know what setting the jumpers must be on, on both drives. So, I can install the hard drive on the primary ide on the mother board, and the optical drive on the secondary ide on the motherboard.

How do I set the jumpers on either device? Thanks!

 

[Javora]

By looking at the Western Digital web site you can see that the Jumper Shunt should be removed for a single hard drive install. I don't think there is a Jumper Shunt on a CD drive so just connect the CD drive to the second IDE via ribbon cable. These devices should be connected to the far end of the ribbon cable. That should be all it takes. Hope this helps.

 

[johnwill]

If you're using one of the 80 conductor IDE cables (and you should be), just set both devices at CS (Cable Select), and plug them into the cable. The device at the end of the cable will be the master, and the one in the middle will be the slave. FWIW, even if the CD ends up being the master, it'll boot from the hard disk without any issues, I have a system configured that way.

 

[Mental_Myopia]

You're correct - the ATA card was included for older motherboards. Slap that bad boy onto the motherboard's primary IDE, and the CD drive on the secondary.

If for some reason it doesn't detect the large drive, Western Digital will have a large drive patch. (I'm pretty sure that you won't need this, though.)

Javora is correct to remove the jumper from the hard drive, and to put them on the far (black) connection on the two cables. As for the optical on the secondary IDE channel, I recommend putting its jumper on the master pins. The optical drive master setting is generally on the two pins closest to the power connection on the drive. However, double check your optical drive's documentation to be sure.

 

[Volt-Schwibe]

johnwill is right about the order not mattering.

many of the systems i work with have cd roms on the primary, as both master and slave, and the hard disks on secondary.

a rule of thumb is this....

cd-rom drives excluded, the machine will always see the first hard disk as the primary.

so if it is

PRI. MA. CDROM
PRI. SL. CDROM
SEC. MA. HARD DISK <---THIS ONE IS THE PRIMARY HARD DISK.
SEC. SL. HARD DISK

or

PRI. MA. CDROM
PRI. SL. HARD DISK <---THIS IS PRIMARY HARD DISK
SEC. MA. HARD DISK
SEC. SL. CDROM

or

PRI. MA. CDROM
PRI. SL. CDROM
SEC. MA. CDROM
SEC. SL. HARD DISK <---THIS IS THE PRIMARY HARD DISK

or any setup as long as this simple rule is followed, it will boot from the hard disk you desire.

~BoB~

 

[tom bianco]

Hard drive settings

Great, you guys have really been helpful.

O.K., heres what I was thinking. I was hooking up the hard drive with the 80 conductor cables to the blue primary IDE connector. I am setting the jumper on the hard drive to cable select. I am hooking up my Plextor optical CD-RW onto the secondary IDE connection.

Since I am not installing a floppy drive I dont have to connect the optical CD-RW on the same cable as the hard drive. I prefer to keep the optical on its own connection so it performs at full spec, isolated, so its not pulling data from the hard drive. Is this correct?

 

[Mental_Myopia]

Yes, keep the hard drive and optical drive separated. The hard drive will operate at ATA100, while the optical drive will operate at ATA33. I heard somewhere that if you have them on the same cable, that the channel will run at the speed of the slowest device on it, in this case ATA33. I'm not 100% sure that this is true, but it's enough of a performance hit to simply not try to find out.

On another subject, if you've got some extra money and want another hard drive, be sure to take advantage of your SATA ports for ATA150 data transfers.
:winkgrin:

 

[tom bianco]

SATA Drive

I would like to do that but I think I lack the skills to make it all work? I have been looking at the WD 36GB Raptor as the primary, and my current WD 250GB drive as the secondary. Since I am building this computer I am not sure of how to configure the drives?

What worries me is installing the OS on the drive. If I was to install the Raptor as my primary drive, how would I set the settings, and should I leave the 250GB ATA drive disconnected when I install the OS. I have Windows XP Pro to install on the drives, fresh.

 

[Mental_Myopia]

I highly recommend having one drive hooked up while installing the operating system. This is what I always do. You've got the right idea. (If you want to configure RAID, you'd need multiple drives hooked up, though.)

In building my new system this month, I almost chose to get two Raptors. However, reading a review that noted noise and hot hot temperatures (the reviewer burned his hand), I went with the quieter and cooler Maxtor DiamondMax Plus9 SATA's. Those Raptors are quite fast at 10kRPM, and come with a very long warranty. If you go with the Raptor, I'd recommend getting a pair of them, and setting up a RAID 0 array on the Intel SATA controller for performance. This makes the two Raptors become like one drive, but the data is split between them so that they may use both SATA150 channels as a single drive. This interleaving, also called striping, will improve performance as your main drive. The large drive could be attached to the Promise SATA for extra storage. This has advantages, as described by clintfan here near the bottom of the thread:
P4C800-E Deluxe Setup

Now that I'm understanding all this RAID stuff, I'm wishing I had configured my system like that. A part of me still wishes I had gotten a pair of those Raptors since I have five case fans...

 

[tom bianco]

Plextor 52X32X52 Connection?

I am still confused. In the Plextor's manual it states that the optical drive supports the cable select option, in fact it comes set from the factory with the jumpers in this position. It also states that the included cable will not support the CS setting. The manual also states that both devices should be set to CS, that is of course if the motherboard supports this option.

The motherboard, and Asus P4C800-E, comes with several cables in black color. I have no idea if they support cable select, nor any idea whether this board supports cable select. I have my hard drive set to cable select, and also connected to the primary IDE connector. Nothing else is connected to this cable.

Am I better off just setting both devices to "Master", since they will have their own connection, one on primary IDE, and the other on secondary IDE? Thanks!

 

[johnwill]

All of the 80 conductor cables support CS, many of the 40 conductor cables don't. Yes, you can set both devices to Master and put them on their own cable.