16x DVD burners on ATA PCI cards?

[willrob]

I have a dual 1G Macintosh, and the only fault I have with it is the slow optical bus. It's only ATA-33, which means my Pioneer 16x burners (109 and 110) can't reach their true burning speed, or ripping speeds. With Verbatim 16 media, I can only get 8x writing; and the riplock free 110 can't rip faster than 5x.

The G4 has four drive bays, 2 ATA-100 and two ATA-66. Currently I have drives in use in these bays, so I'm considering getting a SIIG ATA-133 PCI card. I would then plug two of my drives (a RAID) into the card and plug the DVD burnes into the ATA-66 on board bus. ATA-66 seems to be the minimum speed required for full 16x reading/ writing. It's what the G5's have as their optical bus.

I know from reading posts on the CD-Freaks web site that the SIIG card is used for this purpose sucessfully, particularly for disk copier systems.

Can anyone forsee a problem with this set up? Has anyone done this? I've used PCI ATA-100 controllers in the past, on a Mac 8500, with no problems. So it's mostly the DVD burner+ATA-66 on board bus that I'm uncrtain about. Also does anyone know if the Disk Utility's ability to set up a RAID will still work with PCI disks, or will I need a third party utility, such as Soft Raid?

[terryj]

While I use the onboard standards at home for my Dual 1,
at work we have a dual 800 that has a Sonnet Temp Trio
PC 133 ATA that we use as a FMP (Raid 5) server.
Never have a problem with it, runs OSX 10.35 and FMP Server 5.5.

Sonnet makes good cards, I can't speak on the SIIG cards.
But in theory, I don't see a problem with what you're trying to do,
so long as the mac recognizes what's at the end.
The ATA-66 should recognize the drive fine, and should
communicate at a decent throughput, much like it would
if it was connected to a PCI ATA card.

[lordsmurf]

On Mac or PC, I've had and seen nothing but problems trying to burn with a burner connected to an expansion card. I've seen people write online that they are "just fine" but I've never been able to witness that in person, or with my own hardware.

Those expansion cards are intended to hard drives from what I've gathered in the past, not optical devices.

Is firewire or USB2 not an option. I'm not sure how well those are for speed, but thought I'd mention it.

[terryj]

Most reputable FW cases are ATA 100 or better now.
The ADS Technologies Pyro Dual Link External Case,
sold here is one I have first hand knowledge of.
As Smurfy might point out, the primary function might
tend to lean towards HDs, but I 'm here at work with
a Pioneer DVR-019 inside of of one, it has an ATA 133 bus
and I still get 3.5-4 min burns on Taiyo Uden media
through Toast 6.11 at 12x speed, full disc.
( the G4 it is attached to is a Dual 450, with 512mb of Ram).
FWIW.

[willrob]

I was planning on connecting the optical drives to the G4's ATA-66 bus, and the two drives that are currently plugged into it would connect via the PCI card.

Of course the whole point of this is to whittle my ripping and writing speeds down to those promised by a 16X drive. Maybe ten minutes off ripping a 8G disk, and saving ten minutes writing a DVD. Twenty minutes saved can add up pretty quickly.

[rumplestiltskin]

I'd simply use a longer cable to the -66 bus.

[willrob]

I was planning to do that. But right now the 66 bus has a RAID on it, which I would move to the PCI. The ATA-100 bus currently has my start up disk and a back up disk. The RAID is for video/DVD work, and also functions as my Photoshop scratch disk. Movingit to the PCI's ATA-100/133 bus should provide faster access.