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DVD-rw Installation

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Poohbee

Senior member
I need a bit of a refresher course here regarding the installation of cd or dvd drives into a PC.

Question is: Is it okay to install two optical drives (cd/dvd recorders) in chain in a single ribbon attached to an IDE port. In other words, I have drive 1 as master and drive 2 as slave and both are connected to a ribbon which iis attached to IDE2 connector. I know in years past, it was always recommended that you should never hook up optical drives like that due to data slow downs, etc..? It's 2006 and we have newer hardware and newer technology... What's the word on this type of setup?

My Setup: Plextor PX-712a (master) and NEC ND-3550a (Slave) connected to IDE-2 on an Asus P4P800E-Deluxe, Intel p4-3ghz, 2gigs ram.

 
Well, I can't tell you about speeds because I'm just happy enough to see it all work at all, so I guess I'm an optical drive slut! I use cable select, but want to hear more from smart people "that ain't me" on this subject.
 
Unless you look to copy data on the fly between the two drives leave it as it is. If both optical drives are operating at the same time then as you know there will be a drop in performance. But i can't imagine you using both drives simultaneously a lot of the time so i would say just leave it as it is.
 
There will be a performance hit now as well. I had two nec 3550a on the same ide and was burning at about 10 minutes at least sometimes longer. Had to get IDE adapter to help fix that.
 
Yeah, the reason why I was asking is because right now I have the Plextor connected to a Hard drive on IDE2 as a master and I have the NEC connected as a master on a separate IDE PCI card. The problem I am experiencing is that I believe the PCI IDE card is not doing DMA on the drives. So whenever I burn something using the NEC (which is attached to the IDE CARD) the burn times exceed 18 minutes (30 minutes with write verify) and the buffer is erratic. I swapped the NEC drive to where the Plextor was connected and tried to burn the same stuff and it took less than 10 minutes and the buffer was holding steady at 97%-98%.

Maybe I need to get a new PCI IDE card... Any recommendations?

P.S I will be using the drives to copy discs. Burn data simultaneously on one drive while also burning separate data on a nother drive all at the same time... (Does this make sense? ) hahaha
 
Both drives should be running in DMA mode. If not, then remove both the Primary and the Secondary IDE channels and all other drivers under the IDE section in Device Manager. Reboot into BIOS and verify that both optical drives are set to AUTO detect. Save and exit. Windows will reload the drivers. Verify that all devices are running in DMA mode.
 
I just rechecked the IDE section in Device Manager and everything says it is in DMA mode. I can't check the PCI IDE card (Promise ATA100 ide card) to see if it is in DMA mode or not (doesn't have setup menu etc).
 
I have a Promise ATA 100 IDE card and it shows the DMA mode detected on boot up. Does yours? I have to admit, though, I never had much luck attaching optical drives to it but hdd's are fine.


unmerited
 
Originally posted by: unmerited
I have a Promise ATA 100 IDE card and it shows the DMA mode detected on boot up. Does yours? I have to admit, though, I never had much luck attaching optical drives to it but hdd's are fine.


unmerited
Click to expand...


You are right, it does show the DMA mode on boot up fo the Hard drives but not the Optical... I think that is where my problem lies.. I also just read that Promise cards only support Optical drives in PIO mode. Oh well... I'm gonna spend some money I guess and buy a SIIG pci ide comntroller since it supports everything and is supposed to be fast.
 
Thank you everyone for your help. I guess even in 2006 there are still limitations on how you install the order of drives... I guess that is why sooner than later PATA is gonna go away like ISA slots and SATA will be the norm.
 
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