From owner-freebsd-questions Sun Feb 2 18:39:01 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) id SAA02283 for questions-outgoing; Sun, 2 Feb 1997 18:39:01 -0800 (PST) Received: from mopsy.hobart.tased.edu.au (root@mopsy.hobart.TASed.EDU.AU [147.41.41.103]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id SAA02277 for ; Sun, 2 Feb 1997 18:38:56 -0800 (PST) Received: from localhost (andrew@localhost) by mopsy.hobart.tased.edu.au (8.6.12/8.6.12) with SMTP id NAA22936 for ; Mon, 3 Feb 1997 13:38:48 +1100 Date: Mon, 3 Feb 1997 13:38:47 +1100 (EST) From: Andrew X-Sender: andrew@mopsy.hobart.tased.edu.au To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Two IDE controllers better than one? Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-questions@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk Hi, I have an IDE controller built in to my IO card. It is one of these starnge arrangments where the mother board is in two bits - one has the processor, RAM etc and the other has all the IO stuff built in (video, sio, lpt, FDD, HDD etc). The board origianlly came with a 386-SX-16 so you get the idea about the sort of age (its an IPEX if thats any help). I now have a 486DX-25 board to add to the IO part. I also have a ISA multi-IO card (new last year but cheap) with a HD controller. Part of my HD is unusable due to bad blocks and so to get enough space for FBSD I need two drives. The question is - is it better (ie faster, take less RAM, whatever) to connect each drive to a seperate controller or (perhaps because of the age of the builtin contorller, is it better to stick them both on the multi IO card which appears to allow two drives to be connected (the motherboard controller only allows one)? Should I just try both and run a benchmark and see what I come up with? Thanks, Andrew