Where to put the CD-RW ???

[Hurricane]

Hi people? What's the best place to put an internal CD-RW(Plextor 121032A)? There's a secondary hard drive placed as the secondary master and the cdrom( A memorex cd482e-48x) on the secondary slave. But, I know the CDRW needs to be the master on the secondary channel. What bothers me is I don't wanna put the secondary hard drive as a slave to the master hard drive on the primary because it's DMA 33( an older IBM 2.1G) . The master hd is a 66( Maxtor 91536). What do you think? Thanx in advance!

[hmagnet]

I would suggest you slave the cdrom to the primary and slave the CDR to the secondary. That way you will be able to do cd to cd copy. Experience has taught me when a CDR shares a port with a drive it should be set as the slave.

[Edited by hmagnet on 01-04-2001 at 03:55 AM]

[Xayd]

Depends on the drive, some CDRW's don't like being the slave.

I'd slave the CDR to the primary hard drive if you slave it at all. The more IDE drives on the same cable, the slower each will be. Seeing as you will logically use the CDR the least, while you may use the primary hard drive and CD ROM at the same time, that'd be the logical way if you slave the CDR.

I have my two hard drives on the same cable and CDR as master on the second cable, CD ROM as slave, and have no problems. I can't copy from CD to CD directly, but that isn't an issue since I always take a temporary image of any CD's I'm copying before the actual burn due to an absolute HATRED of coasters .

Xayd

[Hurricane]

Thank you for the replies! I think I'll go with the way Xayd has his set up. Seems to be better to copy a disc first so the burn stays righteous the first time around.

[Hurricane]

....STINK! I thought about this after I replied: My concern is that if'n I put that older 5400 IBM (umda33?) as a slave to the Maxtor 7200 umda66 won't that slow the system down? Huh??? Won't it? Huh? So now what? Would like to keep that older HD for storage. It's got alot of junk I'd like to keep...I can now see another benefit for SCSI! I guess an upgrade to the ABIT BE6-2 would also solve this delema...

---Thanks!

[Confused]

It's going to slow it down to UDMA33 only. Your spin rates will remain the same. Unless you are experienced in transfering large amounts of data and have some way to measure, not one person in a 1000 will be able to tell the difference (unless maybe your Quicken checkbook runs 5000 pages).
The spin rate shows the biggest improvement.
Chas

[Gintaras]

Originally posted by Hurricane So now what? Would like to keep that older HD for storage. It's got alot of junk I'd like to keep...

When you get CD-RW, you get much cheaper! storage:
CD-RW disks- 650Mb each, and costs $2 and less, CD-R disks- $1 and less[even $0 after rebates- like I got all my CD-Rs].

You've got storage. Keep all your junk on CD-Rs[or -RWs], you don't need that 5400 rmp storage.

[reboot]

You can keep the second HD in the system. Slave it to the CD-RW, so you keep your ATA66 for the master.
Just remember to burn from the faster drive, don't try and burn from the old 5400, it may cause problems. If you're running Adaptec software, use their system checker utility, found under Tools, System tests.

[LawyerRon]

What’s the best configuration for cd to cd burning? My son’s computer is set up with the cd rom slaved to the hdd on the primary channel, and the Creative 8432 Burner as the master on the secondary channel. Is this OK?

[Hurricane]

Thanks all for the replies and help! I ended up slaving the CDROM to the pri Master; both I found are UMDA2. And the sec master I made the Plextor and slaved the IBM 5400 since the secondaries both show as MODE 4 during boot up. Seems to be working fine.
Booot up shows : Pri Master LBA, UMDA2 (Maxtor)
Pri Slave CDROM, UMA2 (48xCDROM)
Sec Master CDROM, MODE4 (Plextor)
SEC Slave LBA, MODE4 (IBM)

This should work fine, right? Does anybody foresee any problems with this configuration?

Thanx

By the way, I put a CDRW in the drive, right clicked the drive and formatted the CD. With out adding anything to the CDRW, It only has 529 MB available? I expected 650MB. What happened?

By the way REBOOT, that freemem.vbs thing you posted in the Tip and Tricks forum works fantastic! Have any more of 'em?

[reboot]

Hurricane, that's the best way.
You only get that much free space after the CD-RW has been formatted, the FAT takes up space, just like on a HD.
Thanks for the kudos on the tip, there's more to read in the Hall of Fame, and on my homepage there's links to other articles I've written. They're (some of them anyhow) also available from the PCMech homepage (I forget just where).

LawyerRon, CD to CD burning is best when each is on a separate channel, thus the CD-ROM is slave to the HD, and the CD-RW is Master on second channel.
If your CD-ROM is slave to the CD-RW, it's recommended you copy the image to the fastest HD in your system before burning.

[Edited by reboot on 01-05-2001 at 02:15 PM]

[LawyerRon]

Quote:
"LawyerRon, CD to CD burning is best when each is on a separate channel, thus the CD-ROM is slave to the HD, and the CD-RW is Master on second channel."

Jim, that's exactly how I have it so I guess I'm set.

[Gintaras]

best to copy from cd-rom to cd-rw is to have both on separate IDE channels, but I've read somewhere that Plextor suggests to keep both on same channel. Is it true or that's just for Plextor drives.

I have mine on separate channels:
cd-rom- master IDE 1
cd-rw- master IDE 2
boot HDD- IDE 3[ata66]

[glc]

With that particular Plextor, I wouldn't worry about having problems with direct CD to CD copy because it has Burn-Proof. If the buffer runs out, it pauses and waits for more data.

[Charliey]

My setup is like Gintaras's, i have my C: on a promise ata66 conroller, my Asus 50x cdrom on Primary master, and my burner on Secondary master.

[Hurricane]

That's a good idea, Charliey. Maybe I should I should look into an ATA 66 controller, also. Is it worth the cash? Do you notice a performance increase as opposed to hooking up w/o the controller? I wonder if using a controller would free up user resources. What do you think? Reboot? People?