Advice on how to deal with a crowded IDE Channel.

[jdurg]

Okay, I need some advice here. Just a few weeks ago, I purchased a Sony DRU-510A DVD+/-RW drive to act as a backup unit. In my system, I already have a Seagate Barracuda IV 7200 rpm 40GB HDD, a 16x Toshiba DVD-ROM, and a 32x/12x/40x Lite-On CD-RW. The Seagate is primary master, the Sony is primary slave, the Toshiba is secondary master, and the Lite-On is secondary slave. This has worked out fairly well for me until recently. Recently when I've been burning DVDs with data from my HDD, one of the files will fail the data verification process. Each time, it's just one of the however many files I burn. As a result, whatever I burn will be 99% useful. I think the error may be due to the DVD burner and Hard Drive sharing the same IDE channel. My motherboard is an MSI 845 Ultra-ARU and it does have RAID ability. Would I be better off spending a few bucks and picking up another hard drive and setting up a RAID array? This way my hard drive(s) would have their own channel and I could put my CD-RW and DVD-RW on the same IDE channel? I'm also wondering if this would allow a faster burning speed for my DVD-RW. Right now, my hard drive just can't supply data quick enough for 4x burning. I can only do 2.4x. I was wondering if having a RAID setup would allow my hard-drive(s) to output data faster. Thanks for any help you can provide.

 

[dm33186]

you can run a 1 drive raid array also if its set to stripe, so you may be able to just put your single hard drive onto the primary raid slot and have it work...works for me on my asus p4s8x

 

[Davegod]

why not just use the sony to directly replace the liteon? do you need two cd burners? could ebay/keep spare/sell a friend or whatever.

 

[jdurg]

I have the Lite-On as a separate burner since it's faster than what the Sony offers and has yet to burn me a coaster. Plus, it has the ability to create working back-ups which is a god-send for someone like me who is constantly losing his CDs. At one point I had thought about replacing my Toshiba with the Sony, but that was until I saw that the Sony can only read at a 2x rate. What I may end up doing is switching the Toshiba with the Sony if I don't go with the RAID setup. This way I would have both writing devices on the same IDE chain and the hard drive and main DVD-ROM on the other.

Or perhaps get another IDE chain going via an add-on card. I guess I just want to make sure that changing my setup will have a noticeable positive effect on my performance. (I.E. I don't want to spend a great deal of money just to get minimal performance increases. At least with setting up a RAID array I'd get some added security as well). Heh. The whole IDE and RAID portion of a computer is the one part I know the least about. Perhaps I should just build myself a brand new computer. lol

 

[dukdukgoos]

Maybe keep the CD burner and sell the DVD-ROM. Or just switch out the DVD-ROM and DVD burner so that the HD and DVD burner are on different IDE channels.

 

[jdurg]

Well, I figured everything out! Who would have thought that just messing around inside my computer could have solved this? Just for the hell of it, I decided to go into my BIOS, enable the ATA133 RAID controller, and install the RAID drivers into my WindowsXP Installation. I then went and moved my HDD from the IDE1 channel to the IDE3 ATA133 RAID channel. I then rebooted my computer and up came the RAID Array screen and it detected my solitary HDD as a RAID 0+1 drive! So although it doesn't see it as a proper RAID array, it kind of sees it as a proper Pseudo-RAID setup. Everything writes to it just fine as if it is a normal drive, and in fact, the performance of my HDD seems to have gotten a whole lot better.

Of course, in doing this I lose all monitoring of my HDD in terms of temperature, and SMART info, but again, that's just info. If a hard drive is going to die it's going to die and all the info in the world won't save it. That's what DVD-RWs are for. Now I just need to go test this out some more and be incredibly happy that this works! Thanks for all the advice guys. Though I didn't really use it, it inspired me to just fiddle around until something worked! :beer: