IDE input

-TangleFoot-

Hmm... even if transfer speeds are unaffected, there would still be a performance hit due to the nature of the parallel connection.

The impact of this on a system's performance depends on the application. For example, when copying data from an optical drive to a hard drive (such as during software installation), this effect probably doesn't matter: Such jobs are necessarily limited by the speed of the optical drive no matter where it is. But if the hard drive in question is also expected to provide good throughput for other tasks at the same time, it probably should not be on the same cable as the optical drive.

mikey72

I rarely use the optical drive and the HDD at the same time. I either load software from the optical drive, then it writes to the HDD, or I burn to the optical drive. The optical drive is always slower than the HDD. I suppose if I want to watch a DVD while using the HDD, the HDD will have to wait while the optical drive is using the interface, but even if it was on a separate cable, the system would still be busy with the optical drive.
THe HDD would always run at ATA100 though. Having said that, it's all academic, as the Asus only has one IDE connector anyway. I've recently just changed my HDD to SATA, and the DVD is now by itself on the IDE, there isn't any noticable difference.