Hard Drive Question
 

I just got a new system, with a 7200 rpm drive with 2mb cache. The computer slows when I copy files from disk to disk. Would a 8mb cache drive help solve this problem?

Thanks

Is the other disk a seperate hard drive or just a partition on that one?

When you say from disk to disk...are you talking floppy to HDD, CD-ROM to HDD, HDD to HDD, or what. Be a little more specific, and we'll be able to help you more.

HDD to HDD

I am going to move around the IDE cables in a minute and see what happeneds

The optimim setup would be to have each hard drive on its own channel set as master (default).. if you have multiple cd roms and only 2 ide channels, dont put the cdrom drives onto the same channel as the hard drives. this will slow them down.

IDE channels read from only one device at a time, so if both HHDs are on the same channel, they can read fast separately -- but a disk copy (HDD to HHD) is slower. Also, each IDE channel reads at the speed of the slowest device. So with more than 2 devices, you have to decide whichdevices are used the most, and put them on separate channels

I'd suggest keeping both HDDs together, and keeping the CD drive(s) on the other IDE channel

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I would say I use my 2 hdd alot more then my cd drvices. Thats just me

The reason I suggested keeping the HDDs together is that the bus speed over IDE will slow down to the speed of the CD drive if the HDD and CD drive are chained. Thus, using the HDDs on the same channel is faster than using one of the HDDs at the speed of the CD.

I'd be interested in hearing if the others have experience with these combinations. I have 4 IDE channels and I don't share them

I know I had a cd device and a hdd on each ide channel on my old system and I didn't experience anything like this.

Nevermind, my Dell will not let me with the short IDE cables.