Need help with first-time installation of Plextor CD-RW

[Medea]

Just got my Plextor Plexwriter 24/10/40A delivered today from newegg and need help from you guys before I try to install and run into problems.

My rig:
1 GHz, 512 megs RAM
Abit KT7-RAID
Dual boot: Win98SE/Win2k
Philips PSC706 sound card

I have my hd on IDE 1 and my DVD (Pioneer-115) on IDE 2, both as masters. I have a travan tape drive as a slave on IDE 1 but am going to disconnect since the tape get screwed up.

- should I switch my DVD to a slave on IDE 1 and install the Plextor as a master on IDE 2?
- which drive will become my primary CD-ROM drive?
- any suggestions on how to connect to my sound card (think I have an extra line to run from the drive to the card)?

Thanks...

 

[steelthorn]

You need to keep your hard drive as master on your ide 1. Make your dvd primary on ide 2 and cdrw secondary on ide 2. You definitely don't want to mix your hard drive and cd drives on same ide channel!

 

[Medea]

steelhorn - reading thru Plextor's manual, they suggested that I put the DVD (actually an existing CD-ROM) as a slave on IDE 1 and put the Plextor on IDE 2 as the master.

They claim it isn't good to put the two CD drives on the same channel, and I seem to remember reading on AT that people had problems when they did this.

Why should I avoid putting Plextor as a slave on IDE 1 with the hd?

 

[zetter]

Primary Master - Hard disk
Secondary Master - Plextor
Primary or Secondary Slave - DVD depending on what you're doing with it.

If just using DVD to watch DVDs, install software, put as the Secondary Slave, if doing CD to CD copies, put it on the Primary as a Slave.

 

[Medea]

Ok, then DVD will be the slave on Primary. Thanks, zetter!