Adding a cdrw to HDD cable ?

[Mowerman]

Hi, is it ok to put a new cdrw on the same cable as the HDD ?, all the parts are new, motherboard is a Gigabyte GA-8IHXP, the cdrw is an Asus 4816A 48X Write/ 16X Rewrite/ 48X Read , the HDD is a WD120gig.
some one said that putting it on the same cable as the HDD will slow it down,
and another said thats bullcrap, and that it wont effect it at all because that only happened with old gear.
does anyone here know for sure what the go is ?

I have been serching around the net, but unsure where to look for definitive answers on this.

Regards Kevin.
Ps, i cannot use the second ide controller(just incase you suggest that)

 

[Mictlantecuhtli]

It's ok but it does slow it down a bit, because slave devices use master device's IDE controller.

 

[Mowerman]

Would that only be when the cdrw is in use or all the time(the slow down) ?

 

[Vehementi]

So you're planning on having 3 CD/DVD drives in one system? Oi.

I would say that it would be fine. Since IDE channels are supposed to and expected to have 2 devices on them I don't believe one will slow down the other...I don't think...

 

[Mictlantecuhtli]

Originally posted by Mowerman
Would that only be when the cdrw is in use or all the time(the slow down) ?

From http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/if/ide/confPerformance-c.html:
By its very nature, each IDE/ATA channel can only deal with one request, to one device, at a time. You cannot even begin a second request, even to a different drive, until the first request is completed. This means that if you put two devices on the same channel, they must share it. In practical terms, this means that any time one device is in use, the other must remain silent. In contrast, two disks on two different IDE/ATA channels can process requests simultaneously on most motherboards. The bottom line is that the best way to configure multiple devices is to make each of them a single drive on its own channel, if this is possible. (This restriction is one major disadvantage of IDE compared to SCSI). An add-in controller like the Promise "Ultra" series is a cheap way of adding extra IDE/ATA channels to a modern PC.

 

[Mowerman]

Cheers people, i assembled it today, and it seems to work fine, though it does hang a bit sometimes when i click my-computor.