master slave questions

[IgotZZhere]

Now that I have a NEC 1300A, I have 5 devices and only 4 IDE connections.

Until now, my liteon CD burner was secondary master adn the DVD-ROM was secondary slave.

Now I want to have the

NEC as secondary master and the CDRW as secondary slave.

I only have a 300W PSU so although I could add the DVD rom on a PCI controller card, it's already pushing it. Do DVD-ROMs work ok on controller cards? I thought I've read not to put optical drives on controller cards

So my question is:

Is it ok to make the CDburner a slave? I 've always read that they should be master, but that was in the days before DVD burners were common.


Thanks

[Vejita-sama]

Yes, you can make your CDRW (or even DVDRW) drive a slave it it'll work fine. I took my CDRW drive out as my A05 burns CDRs too (16x). A 300W PSU is more than enough. Most PSU do NOT come close to that output but IDE devices aren't power hungry. It's more of a conver for OCing.

[IgotZZhere]

thanks. I thought I might connect the DVDROM to the controller card for ripping, but teh NEC has teh limit removed thanks to Herrie, so it's about 5-6 x faster than the DVDROM.

[bmiller]

If you have a dvd burner,why would you even need the cd burner installed?The dvd burner does everything the cd burner does,and obviously a lot more.

[ztank]

You can connect an optical drive to a PCI IDE controller. I have my Sony burner connected like that and it works fine.

There are some issues I have encountered:
- my optical drives do not boot from bootable CDROMS if connected to the PCI controller.
- the drive is listed in windows as a SCSI drive (windows thinks the PCI IDE controller is a SCSI controller), so there may be issues with upgrading firmware - if the firmware updater expects the drive to be on an IDE channel.

Other than these two issues however, I have had no problems.

[gmatov]

Just watch what ATA card you buy. My Promise cards DO NOT support optical devices although I always thought they did till Iactually tried them.

SIIG does have a card that says it will, at about 35 bucks. Will have to buy one for my other machine. Scrap the Promise cards. Or use them elsewhere.

[IgotZZhere]

thanks
the PCI card is a Maxtor. Came with a hard drive.

As for why I would want the CD burner, first the cd burner is 48x and teh NEC is 16x, but even aside from that, I just don't want to put a lot of wear&tear on the DVD burner when CD burners are more or less free these days. Plus I already have it. If I had to buy one, maybe I would only use the DVD burner.

OT, but do you think with a 3 yr old 300W Antec PSU I could also connect a 3d HD? Right now, temps run about 40 with 2 optical and 2 HDs.

So that would be a
AMD Barton 2500, 3 HD, 2-3 optical drives, 1 floppy. All PCI slots used.

[John]

I had a lot of problems running a dvd burner dvd rom and cd writer plus all my ports full and 3 usb devices on the go, my computer wouldnt boot in the end because there wasnt enough power, had to get a new power supply, cost £40, but well worth it.

[indolikaa]

If you have a dvd burner,why would you even need the cd burner installed?

I run a CD-RW and DVD±RW in the same machine because the DVD only burns CDs at 24X-R and 10X-RW.

I use 24X CD-RWs so the CD-RW still has a lot of value to me. If it wasn't for these ultra-speed rewritables I'd probably ditch the CD burner. After all, does anybody really need to burn CDs faster than 24X?

.indolikaa.

[IgotZZhere]

I just looked at my maxtor card. It has a Promise chip on it. I could move a HD off the motherboard adn onto teh controller card, but I think I can live without the DVD ROM. All I'd ever use it for is to rip, but with a 2x limit, that's no fun.

I made teh cd burner slave to the DVD burner but haven't tested it out yet. Hope it will burn without errors.

Thanks for the help

[QuaiBoy]

FWIW, I have several Promise ATA/66, ATA/100, and ATA/133 cards floating around in my computers and all of them support optical drives - just not entirely (as ztank outlined above). I'd suggest running the hard drive off of the controller and the optical drives off of the onboard IDE controllers though. My current computer setup is the following:

Highpoint ATA/100 Controller:
Primary Master: Seagate 160GB
Secondary Master: Seagate 160GB

Onboard nForce2 Controller:
Primary Master: Sony DDU1621 DVDROM
Primary Slave: Lite-On 166s DVDROM
Secondary Master: Sony CDU215E1 CD/RW
Secondary Slave: Pioneer 106 DVD Writer

There are no benefits/downfalls from running optical drives in slave vs master config. No problems with the above.

Best of Luck,
-Evan-

[gmatov]

ztank,

If your controller shows the optical drive and it works, then set the boot sequence to include SCSI, rather than CDROM.

I have checked Promise web site. The ATA controllers do not support Optical devices.

However, SIIG has a model which does. Not even all of theirs do.

The others mentioned probably do, as the writers say. I wouldn't know.

As far as keeping your CD burner AND your DVD ROM, why in the world would you put all that wear and tear on your 100+ DVD burner to rip a DVD or to write a CD, when you have those, basically, giveaway readers and writers?

I agree. Use 'em. Save the DVD burner's life.

I have to get another card my own self, as I just bought another 52X LiteOn and had to remove it to install the DVD burner.

The cards that come with Maxtors are Promise, regardless of the Maxtor branding.

Cheers

George