Installation of NEC ND-2500A went wrong?

[Abe468]

Hi, I think this is my first post. I had a question about my DVD writer. I just bought a NEC ND-2500A and hooked it up to a Promise TX2 Ultra 133 IDE Controller Card as a Primary Slave (Primary Master is a 80GB Seagate). My motherboard is using 2 HDD on the primary and a DVD-Rom as the Secondary Master and a CD writer as a Secondary Slave. When I first boot up, before loading windows, the TX2 detects the drives hooked up to it and detects the NEC in UDMA Mode 2 as the Primary slave and the Seagate as master. When i got into windows and burnt some data onto a disk, the whole computer became unusable, the cpu usage @ a constant 100, and it was burning from 600 kbps - 1.7x (it completed successfuly though). I was using Memorex 4x DVD+R (CMC) and did a speed test using Nero before burning. The speed test showed it could burn @ 4x and it says beginning to burn @ 4x but then it takes 40 minutes. I talked to a few people about it and got some ideas, but I was interested to know what you guys thought I could do as well? The general idea was to switch the NEC w/ my cd writer so it would be connected to the mobo instead, but then my CD writer would probably have the same problem. If so, what should i connect everything to (Primary Internal, Secondary Internal, and then Primary Controller and Secondary Controller?) I have 3 hdd and 3 optical drives. I read somewhere about someone else w/ this problem and they concluded that it was becasue the drive was not in UDMA Mode 2, but pre-windows it shows it as so. In windows xp pro, there is now way to configure those modes for this card i think. I also noticed that my video card and the TX2 are sharing the same IRQ. Anyway, i'm going to test a few things tomorrow when I get my hands on a DVD+RW so that I can test things w/o wasting my DVD's.
Thanks for any help,
Abe

[budz]

I would suggest you hook up your NEC 2500A to the mobo IDE controller Secondary Master and the Dvd-rom as Secondary Slave. Use the Promise IDE controller card Primary Master for the Seagate 80gb hard drive and put the CD writer on the Promise IDE controller card as Secondary Slave. DVD burners work better hooked up as master. Another suggestion would be to hook up your hard drives to the Promise IDE controller card. I've read the controller cards are better used with hard drives. I have a maxtor ide controller card and have my cd burner on the primary master.

[Abe468]

Sounds good, I'm going to try it tomorrow evening as soon as I get the chance. One question though, what will happen to my CD writer? Is it going to be causing problems after I switch it to the Promise IDE Controller? Maybe I should make a it a Secondary Master on the Controller card or would that not make a difference? I know the NEC can burn CD's but I would like to use the Lite On cd writer I have, so should it be functional after setting it up like so?
Primary Master: Boot HDD | Primary Slave: WD 120GB HDD
Secondary Master: NEC ND-2500A | Secondary Slave: Lite-ON 16x DVD-ROM
Promise Primary Master: Seagate 80 GB | Promise Primary Slave: Lite-ON 52x32x52 CD Writer
Promise Secondary IDE: No Connection

[RabidDog]

thats almost correct.. I would put the cd writer on its own seperate ide channel on the promise tho.. this will allow the hard drive to function at full speed
Primary Master: Boot HDD | Primary Slave: WD 120GB HDD
Secondary Master: NEC ND-2500A | Secondary Slave: Lite-ON 16x DVD-ROM
Promise Primary Master: Seagate 80 GB | Promise Primary Slave:No Connection
Promise Secondary IDE: Lite-ON 52x32x52 CD Writer