CD-ROM/CDRW master-slave settings?

[lorlabnew]

Hello,

I know it's been discussed here several times, but can someone c l e a r l y explain how these should be connected on a single IDE controller? I mean, what is the preffered setting and why it should be done that way?

Btw, I was recently installing XP from CD-ROM set as slave (on single IDE with master CDRW), and the installation failed in the middle; the files suddenly were not to be found on the CD. When I installed from master CDRW, it worked.

Thx for advice.
Dave

 

[4824guy]

<< I know it's been discussed here several times, but can someone c l e a r l y explain how these should be connected on a single IDE controller? I mean, what is the preffered setting and why it should be done that way? >>



Yes, it has been a ton of discussion on this topic.


In general, it doesn't matter which is set for slave or master if your going to put it on the same IDE cable. Everything should work correctly and at the same performance. Check your cd-rw manual for the recommended position.

Only 1 thing comes to mind, is that a very few burners do not work well or at all when set to slave. One was one of the older Yahama's from aabout 2 years ago.. And that was probably do to the writing software that came bundled with it.

 

[IceT]

Before, I had my DVD as slave and 24x burner as master. My DVD couldn't reach its full speed when ripping (data DVDROM, single layer, DMA enabled on all drives). So when I changed my setup the other way, my DVDROM speed got much much better (like it reaches very good speed when reading DVD, but reading CDs stays the same as before). My burner works like a charm, copying on the fly works, no buffer-underrun.

 

[Dan]

For what it's worth, since my first 2x burner, I've always put the CD-ROM and CD-RW on separate IDE channels. My current setup:

IDE 1 Master: Maxtor 46GB HDD
IDE 1 Slave: BTC 56x CD-ROM
IDE 2 Master: Lite-On 24/10/40x CD-RW
IDE 2 Slave: Seagate 80GB HDD

 

[lorlabnew]

Thx for responses; so from what I understand, it really depends more on your own preference and how well drives behave in master/slave positions...

I would most likely go with HHD ma./CD-ROM sl. on primary IDE and HDD ma./CDRW sl. on secondary IDE. (I'm using HDD/HDD ide0 and CD-ROM/CDRW on ide1 for now).

Heard somewhere that "it shouldn't be combination of HDD and CDxx on single IDE controller, because you limiting your throughput to the slower drive, in this case CD-ROM/CDRW on UDMA33"; I don't know; they are 2 separate channels, so I don't think there should be any bottleneck. But in my case I kinda need both CD-ROM and CDRW on one cable, since my tower is quite tall and don't have cables accomodating for the gap between upper 5.25" position and upper 3.5" HDD position (could move drives lower and "sandwitch" them, but like that they are spread from each other now).

Anyway, for now I'll most likely leave it as it is, as long as it works fine.

Thx for ideas .
Dave