CD-RW or DVD drive for main CD drive?

[Rob9874]

I recently installed my old CD-RW and DVD drive into my new computer. I used to have the DVD as the master, and would run all my CDs from it. But this time I switched them, as I was advised to put the CD-RW on the master. Both drived read at 32x, but my CD-RW (HP 9350i) is newer than the DVD (Toshiba SD-1202). However, it's quite noisy, and Madden 2002 took forever to load (not sure if that's drive related or not). Any suggestions?

 

[AndyHui]

I'd be more inclined to run CDs from the DVD drive, as supposedly CDRWs are supposed to have a smaller duty cycle than CD or DVD drives. It doesn't really matter if it is a slave drive. I don't think you will be reading stuff from the CDRW at the same time as the DVD, will you?

 

[Rob9874]

No, I just thought I should read from the best drive, which I assumed would be the CD-RW since it's newer. So should I read from the DVD? And keep the DVD as slave? What is the real benefit to having a drive as slave or master?

 

[AndyHui]

Normally CDROMs/DVDs/CDRWs offer the best performance being the master device.

The reason that you want the CDRW to be the master device is so that you can perform CD copies on the fly, without having to copy the CD image to the hard drive first.

It's up to you I guess. I have my DVD drive as master (and use this for CDs) while my CDRW is the slave device.

 

[Rob9874]

That's how I had it set up on my old system. I think I'll switch it back tonight. Thank God for Dell's drive clips. They provide little plastic clips that screw on the sides of the drives, so changing them out it easy. Just squeeze the clips together and pull out. No more screws!

 

[Zepper]

Yes, I would use the DVD as the most often used. You don't have to physically change the drives. You can change the drive letters in DeviceManager.
.bh.