[mdlug] Reordeing IDE drives in a system

[Aaron Kulkis]

Dan Pritts wrote:
> On Wed, Oct 10, 2007 at 09:10:47PM -0400, Aaron Kulkis wrote:
>>> not just between each other, but whenever both of them are in
>>> use.  Ideally, you just wouldn't use the slave, period, but
>>> if you hardly ever use the cdrom what the heck.
>> This is why I still like SCSI better than ATA (PATA and SATA)
>>
>> ATA drives tie up the bus (ribbon cable) while the device is
>> doing the (mechanical) seek operation (head movement to the
>> correct track, and waiting until the sector comes around and
> 
> So, how does this make you not like SATA?  under most circumstances
> each disk gets its own cable.
> 
> If you use a port multiplier, there are two varieties but the better
> one works like you would like.  At least, so I have read.
> 

Whether the disk disconnects or not is dependent upon
the disk's electronics, not a port multiplier.

Since it's not required to meet the ATA standard, ATA
disks don't do it.  Disk manufacturers have zero
incentive to put SCSI-spec capabilities on an ATA-priced
hard drive...in fact the only incentive they have
(cannibalizing SCSI sales) is to NOT do anything
more than whatever the current ATA standard demands.
The only real variance I see among ATA disks is
cache size, and rotational speeds (4200 up to 10000 RPM).