how should I do this?

[markman]

I currently have a WD30gig7200rpm with windows and all my stuff, unpartitioned. Im planning on making a dual win2k/linux boot, so I got a new hard drive today (Maxtor 60gig7200rpm).

Now the first problem is that a WD and a Maxtor cant be on the same IDE cable; so Ill have to put the smaller WD as slave on the secondary IDE (with master being a cdrw) and the larger Maxtor as master on the primary IDE. Is that good?

Second thing is where to put os partitions? Linux needs 2 partitions (swap and native [does native hold app data and documents too?]) and windows will need one. How much space should I do for each of those? Should I let Linux automatically partition itself to default sizes? Then those would go one the 60gig. But then would I need to make a OS selector, like Arconis OS Selector 5 (which I legally own)? How and when does that install?

Finally, how should I partition my other stuff (ie apps, games, documents, my immense collection of picture file and movies ;))? Should I make separate windows/linux partitions? which hard drive should they all go on?






If you didnt read any of the above, just post what your partitioning setup is. Otherwise, please help:)

[Tygur]

Originally posted by markman
Now the first problem is that a WD and a Maxtor cant be on the same IDE cable
Why not? Did you try it? It should work.


Originally posted by markman
so Ill have to put the smaller WD as slave on the secondary IDE (with master being a cdrw) and the larger Maxtor as master on the primary IDE. Is that good?
It's generally a bad idea to have a hard drive as a slave of a cd drive.

[markman]

1) a couple websites said there was a problem so one drive would die after a month.

2) why?

[Tygur]

1) I haven't heard of such a thing, but ok

2) The short answer is that only one drive on a cable can be accessed at a time, and the cd drive can tie it up.

[markman]

well then is there any way I can do it and not have slowness or errors?

[JungleMan]

Actually I think I HAVE run a Maxtor and a WD. I'm not sure, honestly.

http://users.bart.nl/~patrickr/hardware-howto/Hardware-HOWTO-14.html

That's the link...

[markman]

anyone else have that?

[Wynd]

Linux installs lilo, a bootloader, when it's installed. You can use it to pick Linux or Windows when you boot up.

[markman]

so hows this sound:

Primary Master: Maxtor 60gig7200rpm, containing windows, and all its files.

Secondary Master: Phillips cdrw

Secondary slave: WD30gig7200rpm, containing redhat7.2

good?:cool:


what will happen when I turn it on, since linux is on the secondary slave? will lilo run? or will windows? or both? or what? or ill just shut up so you can answer :)

[Tygur]

While trying to figure out where I read about connecting a cd drive to the same cable as a hard drive, I found this:

o If you need to put a harddisk and an ATAPI device on the same
cable, the spec says the harddisk must be the master. Although the
reverse will usually work as well in practice, still you'd better
avoid the configuration.


Also, this is what I was talking about before in my previous post. It looks like my post might've been a little inaccurate:

5.3. Does an old HD or CDROM slow down a new drive?

This is not necessarily the case. Still, it is generally preferable to
connect older drives and CD-ROMs to the secondary channel.

If this is not feasible, or if you're wondering if you should upgrade,
a few points.

o The speed loss usually referred to is in the interface timing, i.e.
the speed at which the devices communicate with the computer. This
does not necessarily translate into a real world performance
penalty.

! o This is mostly an issue with older ATA-2 (EIDE) interfaces and some
! VL IDE ones. If you have an ordinary ISA IDE interface, it can't
! get any slower.

! o All modern interfaces support distinct timing for master and slave.
! With these, the slow device does not directly affect the fast one.

! o Many CD-ROMs support at least PIO mode 3. This is enough to operate
! most harddisks on the market today near their maximum speed.

You can use Coretest <ftp://ftp.rahul.net/pub/lps/hard-
disk/core303.exe> to determine if and how performance is affected;
see Q4.15 for a recipe.

OS/2 and Unix users have another reason to put slow ATA devices such
as tapes and CD-ROMs on a channel of their own. As long as one unit on
a given channel is executing a command, the other is inaccessible. A
CD-ROM can easily occupy the channel for 300ms that way.


Here's where I found that stuff at:
http://www.faqs.org/faqs/pc-hardware-faq/enhanced-IDE/part1/

[JPicasso]

I'm confused as to why you bought a maxtor drive if your other drive was a WD,
and you think there are compatibility problems??!!
Or did you get this off the back of a truck?

I think you asked this question before, and nobody's ever heard
of any compaibility problems.

just hook them up. There will be no problems.
and if there is, I'll allow you to yell at me.... for a bit.

[numtel]

I've never had any problems mixing brands.

[markman]

Originally posted by Tygur
While trying to figure out where I read about connecting a cd drive to the same cable as a hard drive, I found this:

o If you need to put a harddisk and an ATAPI device on the same
cable, the spec says the harddisk must be the master. Although the
reverse will usually work as well in practice, still you'd better
avoid the configuration.


Also, this is what I was talking about before in my previous post. It looks like my post might've been a little inaccurate:

5.3. Does an old HD or CDROM slow down a new drive?

This is not necessarily the case. Still, it is generally preferable to
connect older drives and CD-ROMs to the secondary channel.

If this is not feasible, or if you're wondering if you should upgrade,
a few points.

o The speed loss usually referred to is in the interface timing, i.e.
the speed at which the devices communicate with the computer. This
does not necessarily translate into a real world performance
penalty.

! o This is mostly an issue with older ATA-2 (EIDE) interfaces and some
! VL IDE ones. If you have an ordinary ISA IDE interface, it can't
! get any slower.

! o All modern interfaces support distinct timing for master and slave.
! With these, the slow device does not directly affect the fast one.

! o Many CD-ROMs support at least PIO mode 3. This is enough to operate
! most harddisks on the market today near their maximum speed.

You can use Coretest <ftp://ftp.rahul.net/pub/lps/hard-
disk/core303.exe> to determine if and how performance is affected;
see Q4.15 for a recipe.

OS/2 and Unix users have another reason to put slow ATA devices such
as tapes and CD-ROMs on a channel of their own. As long as one unit on
a given channel is executing a command, the other is inaccessible. A
CD-ROM can easily occupy the channel for 300ms that way.


Here's where I found that stuff at:
http://www.faqs.org/faqs/pc-hardware-faq/enhanced-IDE/part1/



in other words, I should...........

[Tygur]

I'd just go ahead and put both hard drives on the same cable and hope for the best.

[markman]

does the above say that its bad to have a cdrw and hard drive on the same ide cable?

[Iain17]

It really all depends on what you want. There should be no problem having two hard drives on the same channel, Hell I have done it with a WD and Maxtor on my old machine and had no problems.

Saying that, if you put it on the secondary channel then moving and copying data between the drives will be faster as only one channel on an IDE cable can be accessed at any time.

This is the same for DVD and CDRW drives. It would be best to have them on separate channels as well. It doesn’t matter as much these days with the advent of Burn Proof technology, but it is still a good idea, hell, nero used to warn you about it if the drives were on the same channel.

So I would go for, assuming you have all these drives:

Main HDD as Primary Master.
DVD as Primary Slave

2nd HDD as Primary Master
CDRW as Primary Slave

In the above config though, if you plan on burning ISOs etc, it would be best to do it off the Primary Master HDD.

[JungleMan]

Originally posted by markman
does the above say that its bad to have a cdrw and hard drive on the same ide cable?
It's not bad, I do it myself.

You probably won't be burning off the Linux drive anyway, as you're just gonna use it for programming (right?).

[markman]

probably