Adding a 3rd optical drive?

[ztx]

I'm rather new to altering the insides of my pc, know very little, and would appreciate some help.

Recently I've decided to purchase a dvd burner from newegg, and was wondering how exactly I would go about adding this dvd burner.

I already have 2 optical drives, one is a cd burner, the other is just a dvd drive. Connected to just one hard drive.

I've did some searchs on the fourms, and only seen threads about adding a 3rd harddrive and such.

So, if I was to add my 3rd dvd burner, would it be better and simple for a novice like myself to buy a IDE Card, and connect the dvd burner to that?
Would there be changes in speed and such?

I can supply with information on specs/drives if required.

Thanks for your time!

[ceh4702]

Sounds like you need to do some prior planning before you buy hardware.

Most computers have either 1 or 2 IDE ports. Only 2 IDE/ATAPI devices can be hooked up to each of the ports. Some chipsets have cut down the number of IDE ports to 1 in favor of SATA; in that case only 2 optical drives would work.

[spyder003]

Do you have 2 IDE ports now? If you're just running 1 hard drive and 2 opticals, you have room to add a 3rd optical. If not, just buy the PCI IDE card. Take a look at Promise cards, they make good stuff.

[ztx]

Yes, I do beleive there are 2 IDE ports. So basicly, would I attach the dvd burner to the 2nd ide port?

[Panama Red]

Hold on, you don't need the CD burner any more if you bought a DVD burner. The DVD will also burn CD's. Just replace it using the same jumpering as the CD burner and you're good to go.

[Cricket]

Yeah, that's what I would do...replace the CD burner with the DVD burner. No reason to keep both burners installed.

Cricket

[glc]

Then you could get an external USB case for the CD burner, and have a portable drive if you wanted.

[whazzzdat]

ztx wrote, "...I already have 2 optical drives, one is a cd burner, the other is just a dvd drive. Connected to just one hard drive..."

And he wants to add a DVD burner. Any DVD burner will also read DVDs. So why not replace the DVD reader with the DVD burner and keep the CD burner to for burning CDs to save wear on the DVD burner? DVDs as well as CDs burn with fewer errors when copied to the hard drive first so I don't see any need for two DVD drives or two CD drives do you?

[bailey]

as a general rule, dvd burners will not play dvd movies.

[whazzzdat]

Wow, how sorry if I had a DVD burner that would not play DVD movies I would be mad. Why in the world can't some DVD burners play a DVD movie?

[bailey]

it seams that its some sort of copy protection that is on some dvd movies, if it detects that it is being played in a burner it will shut down the computer.
it may be some code that is on the dvd that triggers something on the computer when its in a dvd burner.
thats why I have both the dvd drive and a burner in my system

[whazzzdat]

I think it is wrong for them to shut down anyone's computer like that. How can the DVD movie tell what it is being played in? There must be some kind of a program that can spoof the DVD movie into thinking it is being played in a DVD ROM.

[allburnintegrated]

No, thats not true at all. I can play DVD movies in a DVD burner in my other computer.
There would be many angry people if they had just bought an expensive new DVD burner and it couldn't even play DVDs.

[bailey]

Originally Posted by allburnintegrated No, thats not true at all. I can play DVD movies in a DVD burner in my other computer. There would be many angry people if they had just bought an expensive new DVD burner and it couldn't even play DVDs.

read more carefull, I said SOME DVD'S not all dvd's, and that may not be so in other regons too.

[nicolaus corelius]

to not confuse the guy, i suggest him to just hook up the third optical drive.

[bailey]

yes I agree, I have 4 optical drives and 4 hard drives in my system, all ide

[spyder003]

No kidding. Besides, he didn't ask for everyone's opinion on drive setup, he simply asked if he could do it.

I have 3 opticals in mine for this very reason:

1. I have a DVD-ROM
2. I have a 4x DVD-RW that was given to me.
3. I use my 52x CD-RW because the DVD-RW is too slow at burning CD's for my taste.

[ztx]

Woah, I was just planning to rid of the cd burner, but if there is a way for me to add in the dvd burner without hassle I'm all for it.

But where excatly can I hook it up too? The first IDE channel has only my harddrive, the second one would probably be my 2 opical drives. So where excatly would this dvd burner go?

I'm not too keen with tampering inside my computer, since this will be my first time installin another drive.

Also was thinking about just replacing the dvd-rom drive, but can anyone tell me what drives could read dvd's and what can not? I can bring up what dvd burner I bought if you need that.

[bailey]

the way you worded the question, what dvd drives will read dvd's the answere would be any, but to say that a dvd rw drive will read and play dvd copyrighted movies is another thing, I can't answere that, if you want to make copyies of your own dvd movies that you took with your camcorder, there would be no problem, but if you want to make copies of movies you rent or buy, we cannot discuss that type of question here, I only brought that up so that you will not be misled into thinking you could do that without any problems, so its really a matter of just what you want to do with the dvd burner.

my promise controler came free with some WD drives I bought and put one in my computer just so that I could place all my hard drives on it and then put all the optical drives on the motherboard ide ports that gives me a total of 8 drives in my system, my case has the space for it and I had the drives so I just wanted to put them in to be able to do what ever I wanted to do.

also, I have found that dvdrw drives like to be set up as the master, rather than as slave

[ztx]

Thanks for the clarification on the subject.

Getting a IDE card does seem like a very nice solution in freeing the IDE slots for more optical drives, and I won't need the hassle of removing a drive. Since I could move my first HDD to the card, and put my dvd burner in the first IDE slot. What would the speed difference from onboard and the card be? If any at all. Perhaps its just better to attach the Dvd burner or Dvd rom to the card.

And just about any card from promise will just about do?

Thanks again for all your help, everyone very much appreciated.

[Tophinator]

Just a FYI, usually you can not connect a hard drive and an optical drive on the same IDE cable. Just ditch the CD burner, and hook in DVD. You never going to burn or read 3 discs at the same time anyways.

[Cricket]

Originally Posted by Tophinator Just a FYI, usually you can not connect a hard drive and an optical drive on the same IDE cable.

Why not? I've done that in some builds I've done with no problems.

Cricket

[Gizmo]

I think what he might mean is that if you plug an optical drive and a hard drive on the same cable and the hard drive unexpectedly fails, it will bring the optical drive down with it. That's why it's always best to plug optical drives and hard drives on their own dedicated cables.

[jord533]

you dont need 3 drives,
keep DVD drive, get rid of CD burner and put the new dvd burner in its place.
with this set up you will be able to back up you dvds if needed. Dvd burner will burn CDs just fine.

[bailey]

there is no change in performance at all, all the drives will run at there full raeed speed. there is nothing that will decrease the speed by using the promise card except at the first boot up when all the hardware is detected. the system will detect all the hard drives connected to the motherboard ide ports, and then the promise card will detect all the drives that are connected to it, that will be the only change is the system speed and where only talking about 1 second added to the boot up time.

its not a matter of what you need or not, it just a matter of what you want to have in your system.

[spyder003]

Originally Posted by DBG I think what he might mean is that if you plug an optical drive and a hard drive on the same cable and the hard drive unexpectedly fails, it will bring the optical drive down with it. That's why it's always best to plug optical drives and hard drives on their own dedicated cables.

No, not at all. The recommendation is not putting a burner and an HDD on the same channel. They'll work, but it's going to be slow - real slow.

Originally Posted by bailey its not a matter of what you need or not, it just a matter of what you want to have in your system.

Amen, Hallelujah, and the peasants rejoice...

[Tophinator]

Originally Posted by Cricket Why not? I've done that in some builds I've done with no problems. Cricket

On every system that I have tried it on(3) it will not work. The reason(or so Im told) is that optical drives and hard drives transfer information at different speeds, which most chip sets dont like. On my comp(syg.) if I connect a hard drive and a opt. drive it will detect what ever the primary is and not the slave, never both. Tried this on some friends comps and my gf's. Same result.

[Cricket]

Originally Posted by spyder003 No, not at all. The recommendation is not putting a burner and an HDD on the same channel. They'll work, but it's going to be slow - real slow.

But only when both drives are being accessed at the same time. If only one drive is being accessed and the other is not, performance won't drop at all.

Originally Posted by Tophinator On every system that I have tried it on(3) it will not work. The reason(or so Im told) is that optical drives and hard drives transfer information at different speeds, which most chip sets dont like. On my comp(syg.) if I connect a hard drive and a opt. drive it will detect what ever the primary is and not the slave, never both. Tried this on some friends comps and my gf's. Same result.

It might depend on the optical drive brand used and the type of IDE cable. I noticed that some opticals don't like being on the 80 wire IDE cable. The computers I've done this on were older ones using 40 wire IDE cables and both the hard drive and optical were recognized and worked fine as long as both weren't being accessed at the same time. On one computer I had a DVD player on the same channel as the hard drive and they worked fine. IDE cable was 80 wire. But I noticed that certain Sony CD-ROM drives don't like being on the 80 wire IDE cables.

On newer computers the opticals are not on the same channel as the hard drives because the hard drives are SATA.

Cricket

[Tophinator]

Cricket I think you may be onto something with that SATA thing. I just ripped apart an old comp and it had hard drives on the same cable as opticals. I always just figured that some one had them hooked up wrong. My digital logic professor told me that HDs transfer at 133 and Ops transfer at 33. When the comp boots it sets up "things" so its either one or the other, not both.

[ztx]

Well, I finished installing the drive, just decided to replace the cd burner. But there was something weird, I saw. My harddrrive is connected to both SATA and a IDE channel, is that normal? It's a SCSI drive so I thought it would just be connected to the IDE correct? :s

Your comments were very helpful all.

----
Just to fit all my issues in one thread, I also just recently installed this USB 2.0 pci card? It's not really a card though, it has 2 usb 2.0 ports, and a firewire port? (I can draw a picture in paint, its not going to look good, but you should be able to get the idea. ) But, there are wires were I connect it to the motherboard, I connected them, yet it did not seem like Windows XP was able to detect it, I've installed the drivers as well, checked device manager for it and I see the "enhanced" but when I connect my external to the 2.0 port, power up, nothing happens. Any help on this be useful. Want to use 2.0 instead of 1.1 for my external. =x