Questions about IDE drives, ATA, S-ATA

More newbie questions about this new computer I've built... apologies
if these are completely stupid questions, but if anyone can answer one
or more it would be much appreciated....

1) When I boot my computer up I note that my hard drive shows as the
Primary Master, and the DVD burner shows up as the Secondary Slave. Is
this okay? Does it matter if the DVD burner is showing as a slave
instead of a master? Note, physically their both on different ata 133
cables.

2) I also note the DVD burner shows as ATA33 when I boot up.. is this
normal? I tried to watch a dvd tonight and it was very choppy, low
framerates etc. Maybe this was the reason?

3) I just learned what S-ATA is tonight.. I'm positive my motherboard
has it... but I'm not sure if my harddrive does as well.. how can I
tell? (its a seagate 250meg, thats all I know). When I installed it
looked like a normal harddrive, so I just hooked it up like the dozens
of other harddrives i have in the past, by plugging in the IDE cable...
questions.. (a) How do I check that this HD is sata ready? (b) do I
need a special "sata" cable or IDE converter or something? (c) if I
convert it from ide to sata would I lose the data on it?

Thanks in advance

 

sata drives are marked as such..and if you have your hd and your burner
on different cables, i.e., different ide connection, then make EACH one
MASTER...

 

An SATA drive that is 250 "meg" could be filled in one second. I think
you mean 250 "gig".

A good way to test if it is the drive causing the poor playback would
be to rip the DVD to the HD and try to play from there. This will
tell you if there's a weak link elsewhere in your playback. You can
download DVD shrink and/or DVD Decrypter to do this. You'll like DVD
Shrink, since you have a burner, you can "backup" your DVDs to 4.7 gig
blanks. Also if the drive came w/ a driver, install it, windows might
have used a generic.

x1134x

 

To cut off all you hair splitting people I correct myself, a 250 "meg"
write would take 1.953125 seconds on a 3Gb/s rate. . . .theoretically.
Which is closer to 2 seconds.

x1134x

 

and I highly doubt its a S-ATA if its a 250 "meg" drive. They haven't
made those since the 80s, don't you mean 250 "gig"? An sata drive that
was 250 meg could be completely filled in one second.

no experience w/ ata dvd drives, sorry only IDE. But I don't think IDE
and sata drives are interchangeable with a converter.

A good way to test if it *is* the drive that is causing the slowness is
to rip the dvd to the HD and play from there, download DVD shrink,
and/or DVD Decrypter do do this, they're free. You'll like DVD shrink
since you have a burner, you can "backup" your dvds to 4.7 gig blanks.


x1134x

 

Okay, each interface (primary / secondary ATA) can have 2 devices ,
Master and Slave, for a total of 4.

Keep if possible hard drives on a different cable from optical devices.

Hardisk can have a range of speeds 33/66/100/133 , optical are 33/66.

Then there are 40 way cables ATA 33/66 and 80 way cables for 100/133 ,
and after that the BIOS can auto detect 40/80 way connections or you can
set it manually.

(Somewhere in 24HSHD past posts, a lot of this has been covered before
http://groups.google.com/group/24hoursupport.helpdesk? )

So the drive interface ATA (bit) , matched what the port of the
interface on the mobo can do matches the cable.

Yes, newer devices are ATA 66.

Could be CPU, RAM, AV , other processes.

It has 2 sets of interfaces IDE and a smaller black plug for a slide on
connector. Only use 1 at a time.

SATA is a different cable.

No, it's only the interface it's connected to.

If it's your boot drive you would have to make sure your BIOS can be
seet to boot from the SATA drive.

Instead of a wide 40 or 80 wire (usually) gray cable SATA cables are 1/2
inch wide red cables.

Here are some picture, if you get bored by the words.

40 way IDE cable
http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/if/ide/z_000517idecable40.jpg

80 way, note which connection goes where and the color of of connectors
http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/cabling/ide7.jpg

SATA cable , data
http://www.cwol.com/serial-ata/images/7-pin-sata-cable.gif

SATA cable, power (adapter)
http://www.mini-itx.com/store/images/sata-power.jpg
the black end.

SATA power on back of drive
http://www.wdc.com/en/company/branding/usage-files/sata_power_l.jpg
the other small connector to the right of the power is the data.


Me

 

Tell me how a SERIAL cable can transfer data faster than PARRALLEL
cable please? is it just because the science has been geared toward
speeding up serial communications more due to internet over the
telephone? because parrallel communication should ALWAYS be faster
than parrallel.

x1134x

 

Simple answer , technology.

One reason may be a serial cable sends out data in a single stream and
it's easy to match 2 clocks at both ends.

A parallel cable has to sync across all the lines, just a bit more
complex, (ignoring other issues, like serial <-> parallel conversions in
the UART serial controller chips).

Saying that looking at the usual standard Serial Comms ports 115200 baud
is common, and the last time I used Laplink a lot the parallel port
wasn't much different.

Then technology comes into play, with ECP/EPP parallel port which are
faster.

What's the internet and telephone have to do with anything?

Read your last bit again.

Me