When given the choice of putting the CD rom drive on the same cable with a hard drive or on its own cable which should you choose and why?

If you have a motherboard that supports dual IDE channels, then you should put the CD-ROM/DVD-ROM on the second channel, (which could be labled "IDE-1". or "IDE-2", depending on how the first channel is named - some motherboard mfgr.'s lable channel 1 as "IDE-0" - computers count "0" as a "one", it's just the way they count...), but be advised that one of the more common mistakes is not setting-up the ROM drive config. jumper correctly; when added to a single IDE channeled system, your H/D is always the "MASTER", or "MA", so your ROM drive config. jumper needs to be set to "SLAVE", or "SL" position. If you can put your ROM drive on the second ch. of a dual IDE channeled system, then the best results would come if you set the ROM config. jumper to the "MA" or master postion.

The reason being simply the ease of data manipulation; it's easier to use a 4 lane highway than it is to using a 2 way road, to do the same job. With the above 2 ch. configuration, the bus controller for IDE-1 would be your H/D, and the CD/DVD-ROM would be the IDE-2 bus controller...having both drives on the same cable, fighting for bus control, while trying to move all this info, is just asking too much from the I/O, without expecting some slip-ups, (crash, or data loss)!

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