Installing another CD drive

[Cook1]

I have a DVD drive, wanted to add either a dvdrw or a cdrw...

All I have to do is, physically install the drive, set it to slave or master (would I want the rw to be on slave or master?), give it some power, attach it to the board using that 4 pin thing then install the drivers for it correct?

 

[SplinterDB]

Originally posted by: Cook1
I have a DVD drive, wanted to add either a dvdrw or a cdrw...

All I have to do is, physically install the drive, set it to slave or master (would I want the rw to be on slave or master?), give it some power, attach it to the board using that 4 pin thing then install the drivers for it correct?

You want the more advanced drive to be the master. Attach the grey cords to the slot marked SATA2 or IDE2. Don't hook up your cd or rw to the Hard drive it will slow it down.

 

[Cook1]

Oh yeah, forgot about the IDE. What do you mean don't hook it up to the HD? Meaning don't let them share the same power hook-up thing?

 

[SplinterDB]

Originally posted by: Cook1
Oh yeah, forgot about the IDE. What do you mean don't hook it up to the HD? Meaning don't let them share the same power hook-up thing?

No. The IDE will run at the slowest speed that is hooked up to it. The cd rom runs much slower than your HD. Think of it as water( info) runing through a smaller piper to a bigger one. it can only go as fast as the smaller pipe.

the power gives the same voltage to all units (4 pin).

 

[Jiggz]

In short, connect optical drives on the same cable and same channel while selecting the writer to be the master . This will ensure your hdd does not slow down.

 

[Yanagi]

Originally posted by: Jiggz
In short, connect optical drives on the same cable and same channel while selecting the writer to be the master . This will ensure your hdd does not slow down.

 

[LED]

All modern motherboard chipsets support independent device timing...this means an ATA100 device can share a cable with an ATA33 device & they'll run at their respective speeds, independent of each other. In other words, the ATA100 will run at 100mb/sec, & the ATA33 will run at 33mb/sec when sharing the same cable...the slower device will NOT effect the speed of the faster device.

Data transfers are more efficient between channels (primary to secondary, or secondary to primary), rather than between devices sharing the same channel.

So with keeping that in mind, the best configuration for your 3 devices would be:

Primary Master = HDD
Primary Slave = CD-ROM
Secondary Master = CDRW

With this setup, data transfers from CD to CDRW are across channels & from HDD to CDRW are also across channels. This is the optimal setup...however, it will still work if you have them configured differently, it just won't be as efficient...




If you plan on burning Disks on the Fly then hook up the Optical Drives on separate IDE Channels with the burner being Master

 

[wfbberzerker]

a slower device (the cdrw) on the same channel as a faster device (hard drive) will NOT slow down the faster device.

edit: as LED said.