Need some quick advice on Primary/Secondary Master/Slave settings

[Comp625]

Here's my setup.

I have a 40gb Hard Drive, a 52x CD-Rom drive and a new CenDyne 32x12x40 CD-RW (actually a Lite-On). My hard drive is going to the Primary Master for sure. What about the other 2 optical drives? Should I make the CD-RW a secondary master and the 52x a secondary slave (or vice versa)?

Thanks in advance!

 

[Shooters]

I suggest setting the CD-ROM as primary slave and the burner as secondary master. That way, you can burn from the hard drive or the CD-ROM without congesting the channel that the burner is on.

 

[wefixitalways]

It's easy make your hard drive primary master and your regular cd-rom primary slave, then put your CD-RW on secondary master. CD-roms will not work well on the same channel. Hope this will help if you still have questions e-mail me.

 

[Comp625]

Lemme get this straight, putting the 52x CD-Rom as a Primary Slave will NOT slow down the hard drive? What about when you copy data from the CD (from 52x drive) to the Hard Drive. Wouldn't that slow down the transfer rate?

 

[wefixitalways]

Yes it will slow your hard drive down a little but you will hardly notice it. You can not put both cd-roms on one channel. You could by a add on card for the 52x cd-rom and leave your hard drive by itself. And have your cd burner on the secondary master.

 

[cholley]

comp, i think you were right with your first suggestion, you can put both cd-r and cd on the same channel

 

[wefixitalways]

Sorry CD-Roms do not work well together on the same channel:disgust:

 

[DrVos]

I agree with wefixitalways...

For a system with a HD, cdrom, and cd-rw, the best set up would be Hd on primary master, cd on primary slave, and cdrw on secondary master. The reason why, as I recall (correct me if I am wrong), is that IDE only allows information traveling down a channel to go one way at a time. Thus if you were trying to copy a cd with a cdrom and cdrw on the same channel it would slow everything down and increase the chance of buffer underruns.

In a setup with the cdrw as the master of its own channel, information from either the cdrom and hd can travel freely to the cdrw.
Of course if you are planning on doing more copying from you cd-rom to your harddrive than cd making I could see the point of putting the 2 drives on separate channels.... but then couldnt you just install from the cdrw with its (more than likely) faster rip speeds?

Just my 2 cents

 

[StanTheMan]

who said you cant put both cdrom as secondary?
if you put the cdrom at primary slave, the slowdown may not be severe. but when you put a new cd and the cdrom is trying to initialize the cd, the hard disk may not be accessible. This occur EVEN WITH DMA TRANSFER IS SET TO ON.

According to acer manual that I read long time ago (the manual that came with acer 4x4x16 cdrw), it is advisable to:
If you mainly copy from hd to cd:
Primary master: hd
Primary slave: cdrw
secondary master: cdrom

if you mainly copy from cd to cd:
Primary master: hd
Secondary master: cdrom
secondary slave: cdrw

the idea behind this is to keep the cdrw as close aspossible to the IDE controller. I havve yamaha cdrw 4x4x16, and I used the second setting as i could not afford the hard disk slowdown. I have burned so many cds since I bought it (1999) and never have any slowdown nor problem whatsoever.
The only limitation that i had was when I am in the process of burning a cd, executing media player 7.1 could cause the burn to fail (as it scans all the ide channel).

 

[Yossarian]

Of course you can put a CD-RW and CD-ROM on the same channel.

 

[Pederv]

How about:
Primary Master - hard drive
Primary Slave - cdrw
Secondary Master - cdrom

Why?

Even with the HD and CDRW on the same channel, the transfer rate of the HD is fast enough to keep the CDRW busy.
Minimal channel congestion when copying CD's or installing software from the CDROM, because the CDROM is on its own channel.

 

[Ronin13]

If your CD-RW has 'Burn-Proof' (or something like it) to prevent buffer underruns, it can be on the same channel as the CD-Rom and still make drive-to-drive copies.

This is my current setup:

Primary master: Hard drive
Secondary master: CD-RW (Plextor)
Secondary slave: CD-Rom

When copying CD's 'On the Fly' (CD-Rom to CD-RW) Nero (burning software) warns me that the two drives are on the same channel. When I proceed anyway it copies without a hitch.


Now, here's a question to those of you who know: (Comp625: Hope you don't mind me asking in your thread...)

My new PC will have one hard drive, a CD-RW (from above), and a DVD drive.

I'm not using the Plextor very often, and plan on using the DVD for CD-Rom uses.

Should I use the same setup as above (with the DVD replacing the CD-Rom), or should the DVD and CD-RW change places?

I want to keep the hard drive as master alone on the primary channel, but both the DVD and CD-RW would propably 'want' to be master on the secondary (this will be on an ASUS P4T-E).

Will I still be able to make 'On the Fly' Cd copies with the CD-RW set as slave?

Will I sacrifice speed and DVD playback if the DVD is set as slave?

Thanks for any input...

~R

 

[StanTheMan]

I set my cdrw as sec. slave and dvd as sec. master.
copy on the fly using nero, no prob.
got prob only when the master cd is deeply scratched or hav sum error, cox my cdrw got no burnproof

 

[wefixitalways]

DrVos thanks for sticking up for me you sound like you know the difference also. If he wants to put both cd-roms together let him. I can guarantee him he would be seperating the cd-roms pretty quick.

 

[LordAccord]

I agree with the setup of
Burner on second channel
HDD and CD on primary channel

If you want to copy from CD to HDD, and you are extremely worried about a slowdown, use the burner to copy the CD to the HDD... it can read discs, you know.

Why is this such a big issue anyways? With the speeds drives are running at now, technology like burn proof, and CDROMS that read slower than a hard drive can write, its unlikely that you are going to encounter many problems, and if you do, just switch the cables.... big deal, 1 minute, 1 misburned cd.... I approximate .20$ to test this one out for yourself.

LoRdAccord

 

[BFG10K]

Sorry CD-Roms do not work well together on the same channel:disgust:

I've got my DVD and CDRW both on the secondary IDE channel and everything works just fine. I don't have any problems burning or accessing data when both are in use at the same time.