2 disk drives, a burner,and a CD-ROM

[DaFunkyUnit]

the asus a7a has two ide channels. i was wondering how i should set up the devices

obviously, main hd on ide primary.

wat about the 2nd-ary hd, the burner and cd-rom

thanks for any suggestions

-daUnit

[sumyundud]

My suggestion is this:
1st hard drive as master on the ide primary
burner as slave
2nd hard drive as master on the ide secondary
cd-rom as slave.

mine is set up like this and i have no problem w/ it

[Jeffbx]

I'll second that. You want to keep the CD and the burner on different channels to optimize a CD copy. Likewise, you'll get better results if you burn CDs from the 2nd hard drive.

This way the burner and whatever device you're burning from can both work independently - i.e., they can both access data at the same time. If you burn with 2 devices on the same channel, only one device can read or write at a time.

[Hoser]

On one of my computers I had a PCI card that gave you 2 UDMA66 IDE channels. I had four devices, (2 hard drives, burner, DVD) each on it's own IDE channel. I used this because my motherboard only had UDMA33 and the hard drives were UDMA66. The BIOS let me boot off the PCI card, so both my hard drives were on that, with the other devices off the motherboard. If you're running Windows 2000 or Windows XP, you can make your devices whatever drive letter you want. I put my burner as Z:, since I'm always putting in data drives in the machine and moving things around. This way it's always the same letter no matter how my data drive is partitioned. Also some of the new motherboards have four IDE channels (2 raid, 2 regular) so this configuration would work.

[DoPeY5007]

IF your HDD are over DMA33 ( most are now ) no not put them on the same IDE as a CD-Rom...

the IDE will drop the HDD to the lower DMA33 if you do that....


I would put the two HDD together and the Burner as master and the CD-Rom as slave....

[Cheesypuff]

Here is the setup that I have on my comp...

I have my 2 harddrives on primary...master and slave.

and I have my DVD and burner on Sec. DVD on master....Burner on slave.

This setup has worked for me and does not slow anything down at all. And that is also the only way I could do it...since my cables restrict me from doing anything else.

[sbp]

Originally posted by DoPeY5007
IF your HDD are over DMA33 ( most are now ) no not put them on the same IDE as a CD-Rom...

the IDE will drop the HDD to the lower DMA33 if you do that....

No longer true. Modern chipsets allow each drive to run at maximum speed.

[DoPeY5007]

Originally posted by sbp
No longer true. Modern chipsets allow each drive to run at maximum speed.

really???...


I wasn't aware of that

[rajatQ2]

Originally posted by Cheesypuff
Here is the setup that I have on my comp...

and I have my DVD and burner on Sec. DVD on master....Burner on slave.

The IDE interface has a very hard time "interleaving" the data flowing over that channel. Setting up your system like this is a bad idea, for the reason that if you are transferring data between two devices on the same IDE channel.

Imagine data coming from your CDROM, and its destination is the CD burner. It has to travel down the IDE channel, be processed, then be sent back through the _same_ IDE channel to the burner. THis is fine, but the CDROM is still trying to send data down that channel, the next bunch of stuff heading toward the burner. TCP/IP can handle collisions, but IDE devices do not, so the IDE controller is deciding where and when to read data and write data.

Thats a lot of On/Off work for the controller when you could easily put the burner and cdrom on two different ide channels. My two cents

[rajatQ2]

Originally posted by DoPeY5007



really???...


I wasn't aware of that

thats crazy! how modern was this development? Does mine do it? I have a promise card ata/66?
is there anywhere that i can read about this and how it is done?

[DeepFreeze]

uhm. LETS EXAMINE THIS
ide controllers of today! meaning udm 100,66,33
I have abit KG7-RAID.in the manual, it says keep optical drives on one controller. and HARD disk drives on another. do not put them on same controller.

now grandted. WINDOW 2k Pro and UP indentifies each DRIVE and configures it. this also means that windows and your onboard controller know what TRANSFER mode to make your devices. I didnt test this. i RIP my CDs to hard DRIVE first anyway. to keep my burner happy. What i am saying is. you can NOW mix them up. however. if youre smart, put the optical drives on one channel, and HARD disks on another.

my Deep Frozen $.02

[Dave_7]

I have both CD drives on one channel (of my P3V4X... remember that board? Ha!) and I copy CDs on-the-fly at the advertised speed of my PlexWriter 12x10x32A drive.

The other channel supports my WD 10-Gig windows drive and my IBM 40-Gig storage drive.





Dave.

[Cheesypuff]

Originally posted by rajatQ2



The IDE interface has a very hard time "interleaving" the data flowing over that channel. Setting up your system like this is a bad idea, for the reason that if you are transferring data between two devices on the same IDE channel.

Imagine data coming from your CDROM, and its destination is the CD burner. It has to travel down the IDE channel, be processed, then be sent back through the _same_ IDE channel to the burner. THis is fine, but the CDROM is still trying to send data down that channel, the next bunch of stuff heading toward the burner. TCP/IP can handle collisions, but IDE devices do not, so the IDE controller is deciding where and when to read data and write data.

Thats a lot of On/Off work for the controller when you could easily put the burner and cdrom on two different ide channels. My two cents

True that the data will collide...but it's all worked for me so far...I don't know what happening...but it's all working.

[rajatQ2]

Originally posted by Cheesypuff


True that the data will collide...but it's all worked for me so far...I don't know what happening...but it's all working.

Yeah, while i had 2 drives on the same channel, EZ CD creator couldn't burn CD's (lots of buffer underruns), but Nero could do it. Now i switched the drives to separate channels and they burn a lot faster!
YOu're lucky then if it works for you! me and EZ Cd creator made like 30 coasters out of blank cd's i tried to burn

[GraingerGuy]

Alright...I have mine set up like Cheesypuff's....the thing is I do want to set it up like sumyundud has it but my case it to big...suggestions? And I hear that if the length of the cable gets too long it wil degrade the signal anyways...and imo...negating the benefits of a setup like sumyundud has.

[rajatQ2]

Originally posted by GraingerGuy
And I hear that if the length of the cable gets too long it wil degrade the signal anyways...and imo...negating the benefits of a setup like sumyundud has.

up to 24" IDE cables are fine. they are rare though, you'll more likely find 18".

digital signals dont degrade over short distances like that, only analog signals do (like mini-jacks or most other sound cabling).
But it is still over longer distances (than 2 feet) that you might run into degradation
so don't worry