2 drives on 1 IDE cable problem

[ricoman]

I have 2 dvd burners on one IDE cable. I have been having trouble with whatever dvd burner that is set to slave running extremely slow, whether reading or writing. With a benchmark test from CD/DVD Speed the speed is 2.3 with a burst speed of 3mb/s. Ridiculously slow. If I switch drives and jumpers, the drives are fine. I have tried every combinations with an ND-3500, BenQ 1640 and LG 4167B. with the same results. Whichever one is the slave runs like a dog. Any ideas. DMA is on. P4 3.0, 1G ram. w/160 & 320 WD SATA HDs.

[Panama Red]

Have you tried a different ide cable? Try an 80 wire and set them both to Cable Select. See if that helps.

[ricoman]

Sorry, didn't mean to double post, please remove the other. I thought I was just editing.:o I did try a spare cable with the same results, I'll try cable select. Both drives, huh? Thanks.

[ricoman]

Just tried cable select. No go, it sends windows xp in a tizzy, a continuous loop searching for instructions. Did the same thing when I first installed the drives, both as masters. Doesn't know what to do so it does nothing, won't even go to your desktop. Tried one on master the other on cable select with same results. Any other ideas?:(

[Panama Red]

Ok, first let's clarify a couple things. The jumpering has to be either BOTH drives set to Cable Select on an 80 wire cable OR jumper them to Master and Slave on a 40 Wire cable. You can NOT set both to Master or BOTH to Slave. If those combinations don't work, remove one drive and jumper the remaining one to Master. If it still doesn't work, you probably have a bad drive or a bad cable. One defective CD drive will often render both inoperative on the same cable.

[ricoman]

How can you tell an 80 wire cable from a 40. Mine has a blue end to the mobo, black to master and gray to secondary. They came with the Asus P4P800-E Deluxe mobo. I have switched cables, switched drives, tried master/slave, cs/cs, master/cs, and master/master. The only one that works at all is master/slave and the slave is super slow no matter which drive I switch. I have had the BenQ, 3500 and LG all set to slave and they all slow down both read and write, as I said I tried 2 different cables. All were fine when set to master, so it doesn't seem to be the cable or any of the drives.

[not important]

Perhaps the IDE channel is set to PIO Mode? That would cause the slowdown.

Check DMA (http://students.uwsp.edu/ewied096/dma/)

[ricoman]

DMA is enabled.

[ricoman]

I'm all set. For anyone who might have the same problem:
Upon rebooting press delete to enter setup program. This will bring you to the Main screen, scroll down to the Primary or Secondary IDE (whichever is giving you the problem) Mine showed the Secondary IDE Slave as "not installed". Click on that, which brings you to another screen. Set it to "Auto". Hit escape to bring you to the previous screen. The Secondary IDE should now show your drive. Go to top, hit exit and save configuration and your done. My 3500 now works like a Champ that it is. Still my most versatile drive thanks to Liggy-Dee's firmware.:cool:

[Panama Red]

Guess we should have started with the basic question, "are both drives showing in the bios and are they enabled?" Nice job, ricoman and thanx for the feedback.

[ricoman]

Guess we should have started with the basic question, "are both drives showing in the bios and are they enabled?" Nice job, ricoman and thanx for the feedback.
Yeah, I didn't think to check since it was actually working, just real slowly and it was recognized in windows and CD/DVDSpeed. Live and learn.:D