Should Video drive be master or slave ?

[hapless]

I am using a Marvel with good results playing from a rendered output file, but it drops a lot of frames playing from the Premiere timeline. My system drive is the master and my video drive is the slave on the same data cable. Would it help the Video drive performance if I moved it to master on the second data cable ?? (which currently has my CD and an LS120 drive). I have recently read that EIDE doesn't share I/O and therefore I assume when the system drive needs data, it cuts off the video drive. As premiere puts temp files on the system drive maybe that is why timeline playback drops frames ?

Thanks.

Peter.

[Grigory]

Some say it may help.

All my attempts to find any difference in Primary/Secondary/Master/Slave configurations failed - everything was the same. I am now using two video drives both as slaves.

Yes, your system drive may interrupt reading from primary slave when swap file is accessed. So, you have to take care about it.

Apart from sudden system activities, I see no difference where and how to connect video drive.

Of course, I assume no hardware-specific problems in your system.

Grigory

[This_Idiot]

Hi Peter,

You'll get a dozen different answers to this question, so the only real way of finding out is to try it.

The purist answer is that your system drive should be master on IDE channel 1 and your AVI drive master on IDE channel 2. That assumes no other factors.

It's never a good idea to mix CD-ROM and HD on the same header, as most CDRoms are not DMA compatible and the whole channel "may" switch to a lower transfer rate.

Personally I use IDE1 master for system, IDE1 slave for AVI, and CDRoms (1 or 2 depending on this weeks configuration) on the second channel.

Whatever you do, make sure that you have DMA enabled on the HDs. Read http://idiots-guide.matroxusers.com/tipsntricks.html for more pointers