three rom drives

[mangles]

Is it possible to have three rom drives set up on the same pc. If so how do you set up the third drive??

[ktkendall]

Hello and welcome;
if you just have a standard Mainboard that has 2 IDE controllers and without buying an add on controller card U will have to slave that 3rd optical drive to your harddrive. it is generally not recommended as it may adversely affect performance of the harddrive but it will work..

[mangles]

Thanks for the tip.

Am I better off buying an extra controller card or look at buying a case and connecting to my machine via firewire?

[ktkendall]

Originally posted by mangles Thanks for the tip. Am I better off buying an extra controller card or look at buying a case and connecting to my machine via firewire?

I take it what U mean is that U already have firewire onboard and are considering external firewire optical drive.. Either should do you well, I would think that comes down to wether U feel like adding on a card inside your case and playing around inside or the convenience of just adding an external device. I would think a good controller card may be just a bit better but really I would think either will do well...

[glc]

Slaving an optical drive to the hard drive will not cause any performance issues, that theory is a thing of the past.

[ktkendall]

I'm sure though if U were doing something that required that cdrom drive to be read from and also accessing the main HD then U would see quite a slowdown, like if ripping a cd from that cdrom drive to the HD....

[glc]

The hard drive will still be a heck of a lot faster than the CD drive. True, it's best to transfer data across channels instead of the same channel, just set up the 3 drives so all or most of the work you do will be going across channels.

[ktkendall]

Also there mangles do U think U really need 3 drives? DVD can read regular cdroms as can cdrw drives....

[piasabird]

Seems like a waste to have 3 ROMS I cant imagine a scenerio where a person would use all 3 at once. Might be easier to use one of those Trio boot selector devices. I think soon they will make CDROMS that can play music without having the computer on.

[glc]

piasa: They have those in laptops now.

[mangles]

I have a dvd rom and cdrw. As I have a small business and I regulary burn cds with updates, it would be nice if I can burn two at a time, while still having the dvd.

[mangles]

I have a dvd rom and cdrw. As I have a small business and I regulary burn cds with updates, it would be nice if I can burn two at a time, while still having the dvd.

[glc]

You will need the retail version of Nero to burn 2 simultaneously - the OEM version won't.